ReadyBoost - Same USB Drive, Different Behaviour in 32 & 64 bit Vi

[Guest]

Hi,

Experimented today with a Verbatim 1GB USB flash drive as a ReadyBoost drive
- its very fast in XP so I was expecting no problems.

It worked fine in the 32 bit version of Vista, but the 64 bit version
refused to use it as it "didn't meet the perfomance requirements" necessary.

Any thoughts about how to get it working in 64 bit Vista - suspect two
possibilities:

a. 64 Bit Vista has sub-optimal motherboard drivers at present - so the USB
drive is incorrectly reported as being slow due to this problem.

b. 64 Bit Vista is more fussy about the format of the disk - I'm still using
the FAT format it was supplied with. Any benefit in reformatting as NTFS?

 

[Robert Moir]

Any thoughts about how to get it working in 64 bit Vista - suspect two
possibilities:

a. 64 Bit Vista has sub-optimal motherboard drivers at present - so
the USB drive is incorrectly reported as being slow due to this
problem.

b. 64 Bit Vista is more fussy about the format of the disk - I'm
still using the FAT format it was supplied with. Any benefit in
reformatting as NTFS?

'A' or some variation therein seems likely.
As for 'B', Fat32 is the expected format for a USB drive, readyboost isn't
expecting anything other than what you've shown it.

 

[Alan Morris]

Bob,

You may wish to try the following in order to get it to work. I saw this
solution posted in an earlier thread by a knowledgeable user and saved it
for future reference and reformatting. It is working for me with my PNY
2Gb stick and I believe it should work for you. I am also running the 64 bit
version of Vista. Anyway, here's the details:

Tuesday, September 12, 2006 4:42 AM by Sefi
In some cases even a slower USB device could help. For example an older
notebook with 1G ram and a slow HDD (4200RPM). It these cases you can enable
readyboost with a slow device.

1. Let Vista test is, and check the Do not Retest this device checkbox.
2. Unplug the device
3. Go to regedit
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\EMDMgmt
4.find the key related to you device (the device vendor and name is in the
key)
5. Change the follwing values:
Device Status 0x02
ReadSpeedKBs 0x1000
WriteSpeedKBs 0x1000
6. Plug the device, right click on it to open properties and enable cache.

Hope this helps!!

Regards,

Alan....

 

[Guest]

Thanks for that - I've pretty well given up on the 64 bit version for the
time being (severe shortage of drivers), but I'll try that if I go back to it.

 

[skon]

'A' or some variation therein seems likely.
As for 'B', Fat32 is the expected format for a USB drive, readyboost isn't
expecting anything other than what you've shown it.

Thats weird. On my system in Vista 32bit (have not tried 64bit yet) install
it will only recognize my USB drive and use it for ReadyBoost if it's
formated as Fat or NTFS. If I format my USB Drive as Fat32 it will not let
me use it for ReadyBoost. I tried this a few days ago and didn't think
anything of it untill I read this. So this leads me to belive that weather
your using 32bit or 64bit that the motherboard drivers may be the root cause
in his case. Of course it could be choice number e. or f. as these things
go.

Regards,
Skon