Comments on: ReadyBoost Performance Test

By: How to Test (and Understand) Hard Disk Drive Performance : Windows Help by Tony Northrup

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:50:37 +0000

[...] ReadyBoost uses this to improve the performance of Windows by caching files from the hard disk to a flash drive. If it would be faster to read it from the flash drive (like, if it’s a small segment of data that would need to be randomly accessed), it reads it from the flash drive. Otherwise, it takes advantage of the hard disks high sequential read performance. [...]

By: JNP

JNP — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 17:58:47 +0000

My first post is right above this one. I finally had time to test my boot time with and without the 2gb ReadyBoost. Without ReadyBoost, my machine takes about 1 minute 30 seconds to boot. With ReadyBoost, my machine boots in less than 55 seconds! Like I said in previous post, nice, inexpensive kick in the pants for my system!

By: JNP

JNP — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:22:26 +0000

I had an extra Kingston 2gb MicroSD card lying around that I put into the adapter and plugged into the front memory card reader on my HP TouchSmart IQ770. Not a screaming fast machine for sure, with only a Turion dual-core 1.6ghz processor and a total machine WEI of 4.6. The hard drive has a 5.8 WEI rating, though, so I didn’t expect much improvement. My TouchSmart has a built-in HD television tuner and DVR. Without ReadyBoost, the picture stutters for a moment when I do other tasks like change volume, etc. With ReadyBoost, all HD picture stutter is GONE! This 12 dollar microSD card is a nice, inexpensive little kick in the pants to my system! Haven’t had time to test other things like startup time, etc, yet.

By: DC

DC — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 04:45:11 +0000

It’s not like adding more physical RAM to your system… from my understanding it caches small temporary files which will benefit from random reads.
Your system still uses the paging file on the hard disk, and will still require physical RAM to avoid paging to disk. I’d suggest buying more RAM.

By: garlen

garlen — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:47:19 +0000

hey guys i just got a flash drive which is enhansed for ready boost and i havent noticed any diffirence in any thing. u may say i may have really good ram (think again) i have 512mg of ram and i got a 2 gig flash drive and it did not do any diffirence. my laptop is still continuasly asking me to close programs every now and then and is still very slow. im not even sure if ready boost is working. even tho the flash drives light flash constantly. and if i went on task manager it still says i have 512 ram????? helppppppp

By: lewis

lewis — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:28:51 +0000

sorry should have given location:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies

By: lewis

lewis — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 17:53:10 +0000

Btw ppl if you use readyboost and want to hide the drive in my computer theres a registry hack that can do this.

Open your registry and find or create the key below.

The “NoDrives” value uses a 32-bit word to define local and network drive visibility for each logical drive in the computer. The lower 26 bits of the 32-bit word correspond to drive letters A through Z. Drives are visible when set to 0 and hidden when set to 1.

If your not happy working in Hex, add these decimal numbers to hide the drive(s):

A: 1, B: 2, C: 4, D: 8, E: 16, F: 32, G: 64, H: 128, I: 256, J: 512, K: 1024, L: 2048, M: 4096, N: 8192, O: 16384, P: 32768, Q: 65536, R: 131072, S: 262144, T: 524288, U: 1048576, V: 2097152, W: 4194304, X: 8388608, Y: 16777216, Z: 33554432, ALL: 67108863

For example to hide drive A and drive D, you would add 1 (A) + 8 (D) which means the value should be set to “9″.

By: Iwan

Iwan — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 18:41:22 +0000

Tony, i’m having a hard time trying to get ready boost to work on my laptop using 2 gig Sandisk Extreme III. I’ve search and found out that this card is ready boost certified. I also find out that problem could be from my internal card reader, how to solve this problem? I’m using VAIO VGN-TZ17GN, it has both memory stick pro duo and SD slot (it’s a Ricoh Device). I only have 1 gig Ram which is why vista is ‘walking’ very slow and all the more reason for me to make ready boost work. Thanks for your kind help.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 18:33:32 +0000

@Hozer

Pfff.. dude.. Readyboost is not about sequential reads.. its the accesstime that counts here!

Please, read on how it works before you make lame remarks like this…

By: Hozer

Hozer — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 02:03:38 +0000

Ready Boost is a JOKE!!! Its too Slow!!

Lets do the math………….

Fact 1: The maximum data transfer rate on a memory stick is 24-30mb/s MAX!!!!

Fact 2: The data transfer rate on a hard drive is 80+mb/s

As you can see that memory sticks are about 2.5 times slower than a hard drive.

Told Cha!!! ;)

By: Eric Johnson

Eric Johnson — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 05:30:11 +0000

I have the Patriot XPorter XT 4 GB flash drive and have enabled ReadyBoost for my laptop. I have one GB of RAM (that’s all this particular computer can go to). When I right-click Properties on the flash drive, and click the ReadyBoost tab, I can only go up to 1150 MB to reserve for system speed. I wanted to be able to use 2.5x of my RAM for this. Any idea why I’m limited, and/or how to increase this?

Thanks. Great blog.

By: Pugwash

Pugwash — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 11:13:33 +0000

Are you looking at the overall rating or just the Primary hard disk subscore?

By: loops

loops — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 20:21:52 +0000

How did u get a score of 3.7 of a d600…i have a d600 and my score is 1.0….d600’s only have a radeon mobility 9000 with 32mb of vid memory which scores 1.0 hence the lowest subscore on vista’s rating

By: Reader Question: ReadyBoost Performance - Windows Vista help

Reader Question: ReadyBoost Performance - Windows Vista help — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 15:47:06 +0000

[...] did a pretty in-depth review of ReadyBoost performance here. It’s definitely not a “marketing scam”. Here’s the thing, though–the [...]

By: Tony

Tony — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 11:42:42 +0000

It’s definitely on my list to do some post-startup ReadyBoost testing–I can tell it helps some, even on my fast computers, because I see them accessing the ReadyBoost drive regularly. I probably won’t have time for at least a couple of weeks, because I have some very anxious editors :).

ReadyBoost is designed to help startup time, but I don’t know exactly which stage it’s available. As you can see from my tests, it definitely does significantly help on computers with slower drives.

By: Gary

Gary — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 05:38:33 +0000

Dear Tony,

Thank you for your explanation.

Another question is,you tested Readyboost performance by measuring startup time,but as I know , the flash drive can be only detected/accessed until Windows detects it.How does it improve startup time?Readyboost should not be enabled before entering Windows.

Could you please check if following is another method to test Readyboost?

1. Create a new account.
2. Start Vista and login new account.
(Above two are make sure that Superfetch hasn’t involved in)
3. Run some application to fill in all available memory.
4. Run Windows Mail and measure first startup time.
5. Enable Readyboost.
6. Close Windows Mail and run other applications to make sure that Windows Mail program is cleared in memory.
7. Run Windows Mail again and measure 2nd startup time.
(This time should be fast because of Readyboost)

Is above an another good way to test readyboost performance?

Thank you!

By: Tony

Tony — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 03:46:56 +0000

Gary, that sounds about right.

SuperFetch is always working; it’s just a smarter algorithm for accessing files.

ReadyBoost accesses files from the flash drive if, and only if, it’s faster to access it from flash memory than it would be from disk. Specifically, non-sequential reads.

By: Gary

Gary — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 03:22:43 +0000

Thank you Tony.

No matter Readyboost is enabled or not,superfetech is always working right?
Without readyboost, superfetch loads files that users frequently access from hard disk.If with Readyboost, superfetch can load files from flash drive instead of hard disk.
Is my opinion right? Thank you for your time.

By: Tony

Tony — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 01:35:50 +0000

I rebooted several times just to make sure the results were reproduceable and consistent. As I recall, they were consistent right from the start.

Vista will adjust the contents of the cache over time to your behavior, however.

By: Gary

Gary — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 10:01:52 +0000

Hi,

It seems this is a good way to test Readyboost’s performance,but I got a question.

You wrote that you reboot several times until Superfetch works,as I know that superfetch figures out users behavior and speed up performance,is that why you reboot several times? I think the purpose is to reduce the effect superfetch interferes Readyboost’s testing.Is that right?