Windows 7 Ready Boost Limit?

[Anon_F]

I'm using a 16GB USB Flash Drive for Ready boost in Windows7 Pro.
But the max i seem to be able to use is 4094MB & the drive is clean with nothing on it?
Any reason for this as i've had a look at google & at ms's site.

Argh just found the reason it uses upto 4GB

 

[EvanDavis]

one has to format the flash drive as NTFS or exFAT in order to use more than 4 GB of space for caching because FAT16 and FAT32 impose file size limit of 2 and 4 GB respectively.

Source

A bit more to read on the MSDN Blogs. I know it says Vista, but same thing as Windows 7

 

[floppybootstomp]

Argh just found the reason it uses upto 4GB

.....and?

Needed formatting, perhaps?

 

[muckshifter]

I'm using a 16GB USB Flash Drive for Ready boost in Windows7 Pro.

Why?

Do you already have 4gig Ram?

Is the card superdooper fast, like 0.20ms access time?

Most flash sticks will give you read/write speeds, but these are averages. This means that one part of the stick might be higher, and another lower ... many 'high speed' sticks actually have one segment of lightning fast memory, and the rest is slow. Another problem, is, these are sustained speeds ... readyboost requires much smaller read/write access ... which means that a device that responds in 1.2 ms, and then reads at 300 MB/s simply will not work ... no matter how fast its listed read speed is.

Hey, I'm not trying to ruin every ones parade here, but I think this myth that 'readyboost' is a numerical 'go-faster-stripe' is a oxymoron ... if you got a 'shop bought' entry lvl laptop, then I'm sure, as they traditionally use slow HDs, you will see an improvement.

Much of the confusion as to how well readyboost works seems to be because there hasn't been any credible source doing any reliable benchmarks using well spec'd flash cards.

Once you get into the realm of 4GB, there is really no advantage to ready boost at all, and it can, in fact, slow down your system. This isn't me ****ing on your parade, this is Microsoft's word on it.

 

[Anon_F]

.....and?

Needed formatting, perhaps?

No only 4GB will be used.
Only use it when running some high end CAD software i'm testing for a friend.

 

[Silverhazesurfer]

It's not a Ready Boost issue. It is a Windows memory issue. WIndows can only recognize so much memory with certain versions. Check to see that the version you have installed can support the amount of USB you are trying to force in.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978610

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366778(v=vs.85).aspx

also relevant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7#Physical_memory_limits