ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive

[Guest]

By using a ReadyBoost USB Key, will it use it to speed up boot up time like
with a ReadyDrive? Or is the Ready Drive feature exclusive to hybrid hard
drives? I'm thinking about geting a new Vista computer, but might wait for
hybrid hard drives to become more avaliable before if ReadyBoost won't help
with boot up times. Thanks.

 

[Richard G. Harper]

ReadyBoost is a caching techonogy, ReadyDrive is a hybrid hard drive with
both fast silicon memory and slower disk memory. Apples and oranges.

 

[Victek]

By using a ReadyBoost USB Key, will it use it to speed up boot up time
like
with a ReadyDrive? Or is the Ready Drive feature exclusive to hybrid hard
drives? I'm thinking about geting a new Vista computer, but might wait
for
hybrid hard drives to become more avaliable before if ReadyBoost won't
help
with boot up times. Thanks.

This is a good question. ReadyBoost caches the contents of the page file,
and I believe the cache is saved from session to session. Since data is
paged during the boot process ReadyBoost may indeed speed it up. Anyone
want to jump in here?

 

[Donald McDaniel]

This is a good question. ReadyBoost caches the contents of the page file,
and I believe the cache is saved from session to session. Since data is
paged during the boot process ReadyBoost may indeed speed it up. Anyone
want to jump in here?

What ReadyBoost does is cache copies of the most used programs and data in a
file on the ReadyBoost-capable thumb drive, so that they start faster, since
they don't have to be loaded from magnetic media (the Hard drive), which is
slower.

Basically, this means that the ReadyBoost drives act like a super-prefetch
cache.

Using my SanDisk Cruzer (4GB), I must admit that Vista starts quicker, and
programs seem to be snappier than without one. In addition, normally, I
find that my HD is always grinding, but it seldom grinds with the Cruzer in.

By the way, if your HD is ALWAYS grinding, it is because of your Indexing
settings, or because your Index is not up-to-date. I turned Indexing off,
and the grinding definitely slowed down. I really don't need to find a file
in 5 milliseconds rather than 40 or 50. In fact, I really can't tell the
difference with Indexing turned off. Of course, if you're always in a
hurry, maybe it would be better to endure the disk grinding (caused by Vista
keeping the Index up-to-date) rather than the extra few seconds needed for
Windows Search to find files with it turned off.

In addition, with Indexing turned on, and many files not indexed yet, it
will definitely slow the machine down, even to the point of making all
operations very sluggish (even with 2GB of system RAM). However, once the
Index has done a complete inventory of your files, Search operations become
very fast, much like unnamed competitors' search operations.

So Indexing has its good points and its bad points.

Using a fast thumbdrive is a very helpful thing under Vista. I highly
recommend it. But cheap, slow thumbdrives will not work with Vista. They
do make excellent replacements for floppies, however, and really make
transferring files from room-to-room much easier and faster.