Can a USB pen drive be used for WinXP virtual memory?

[Larry Roberts]

Instead of using your HDD for a WinXP swap file, can a USB pen
drive be used instead? I'm thinking it would be faster, but maybe I'm
wrong. Could it even be done?

 

[Clint]

I think you're wrong about it being faster, even if it could be done. The
performance of the USB drives is considerably slower than that of current
HD's. I think they top out at about 30/20 (for read/write, as per spec
sheet from OCZ as an example), compared to the 80MB/s my Seagate SATA drive
gets (as an example).

Clint

 

[Mike T.]

Instead of using your HDD for a WinXP swap file, can a USB pen
drive be used instead? I'm thinking it would be faster, but maybe I'm
wrong. Could it even be done?

With Winxp, no. With Vista, YES:

http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/04/14/576548.aspx

But unless you got a really good deal on a pen drive, adding more RAM to the
system would probably be a wiser choice. -Dave

 

[Eric]

Flash memory has a maximum (finite) amout of times it can be written
to, so it is not advisable. New hard drive with flash memory built into
them are coming out that enables Windows to boot the system files more
quickly, but the data written to the flash memory won't change very
often. Virtual memory is contantly being written to.

Eric,
PC Buyer Beware!
http://www.pcbuyerbeware.co.uk/