readyBoost.sfcache disappers, but no disk space appears on drive

[Tom Chm]

On my 2GRam laptop, I am running Vista Enterprise and am current with all
Windows Updates. I have a 4G USB thumb drive, (Lexar JD Lightning II USB
Device, 4GB.),
dedicated solely to ReadyBoost. ReadyBoost usually kicks in once I start up
a VPC (1G allocated to it), then starting compiling with VS2005 while
running Outlook 2007.

But every 3-4 weeks, Ready Boost randomly stops working. I start
investigating why my drive no longer shows any disk access, I have noticed
that my ReadyBoost.sfcache file disappears from the drive after a while, yet
the disk drive still shows no space left on the drive. When viewing the
drive in explorer, it shows only 65MB free, but doesn't show any files on
the disk, even through show hidden are turned on. When this happens, the
only way I have found to get around it is to reformat the drive to recover
the last disk space and then enable ReadyBoost on this drive again.

Restarting the ReadyBoost Service doesn't help.
Emptying the Recycle Bin doesn't help.
Looking at the Reliability and Performance Monitor, the Readyboost file is
no longer listed.
Googling I see others have seen the file disappear, but noone seems to have
lost the disk space.

Anyone seen this before and / or have a solution to this?
Tom

 

[Walter Blanchard]

Tom, this is off topic, but I see you are using Vista Enterprise. All but
one of my machines is running Vista. The one that is not is capable (so it
says) but has old software and peripherals attached. When I read about
Enterprise, I get the impression that Enterprise supports more legacy
hardware and software than do the other versions of Vista. Is that an
accurate understanding?
--

______________________________

Walter B
waltblanch[at]tampabay[dot]rr[dot]com
______________________________

 

[AJR]

Tom - Cannot address your post directly, however, according to the Vista
Resource Kit, you cannot access or verify files on the ReadyBoost external
device - the files are encrypted to provide security in the event the device
still contains data when removed.

Data is not lost on removal since data sent to the device (non-sequential
read/writes- sequential read/writes are sent to the HD) are copies.

Activity is indicated by the LED activity on the device.

 

[DevilsPGD]

In message <[email protected]> "AJR"

Tom - Cannot address your post directly, however, according to the Vista
Resource Kit, you cannot access or verify files on the ReadyBoost external
device - the files are encrypted to provide security in the event the device
still contains data when removed.

You can't access the content, but the cache file itself is just another
file, at least as far as the filesystem is concerned.

 

[Tom Chm]

My problem is not trying to understand the encrypted file format,
but the file itself disappears!