Ready Boost

This is good for low power PCs and is setup on my wifes Desktop that has 1GB Ram and Windows 7 RC1, Ready Boost helps your computer by giving it more high-speed memory. If your computer is running low on RAM (random access memory) then it has to fire a lot of applications out of high-speed physical memory to the paging file on your hard drive. This usually results in a big drop in performance and increased activity on your hard drive. Ready Boost helps this situation by giving Windows an alternative to having to stick data into the slow paging file on your hard drive. Instead, Ready Boost uses a USB storage device that is faster than a hard disk. This results in a performance boost because Windows will have a high speed alternative than using the slower paging file.

In order for Ready Boost to work, it requires a USB storage device, Pen Drive, Flash Drive that meets minimum performance and space requirements:

1. The device must be at least 64 MB
2. The device must be USB 2.0
3. It has to be able to read at 3.5 MB/s
4. It has to be able to write at 2.5 MB/s

If you are not sure if your USB storage device, Pen Drive, Flash Drive meets these requirements follow these steps:

1. Plug in USB storage device.
2. Go to Computer and right click on the removable storage device and select Properties.
3. If your device is compatible, you will see a Ready Boost tab. Click on that.
4. Select Use this device and select the amount of space on it you want to dedicate for the Ready Boost system file.
5. Click OK.

The updated Readyboost in Windows 7 will see several advancements. The 4 Gigabyte restriction will be lifted which essentially means that flash drives with larger capacities can then be used as additional cache. The limit to one Readyboost device has also been removed which gives users the possibility to use multiple flash drives as additional caches in Windows 7.

Thats good news clifford_cooley, and not long to wait now , i think it will be very interesting to see what the final OS will be like and behave.

This is an old thread, and one worth taking a second look at. I have a 4GB Kingston USB Flash Drive, and this is my deal. When I plug it into my desktop (where I don't even need it), Ready Boost works fine. The drive is continually flashing, and when you view it by clicking Computer from the Start Menu, there's a red bar in the space, indicating usage. On my laptop, where I badly need it (especially running Vista or a VM in 7 Pro), when I click onto Ready Boost in the Properties of the device, it says that it doesn't meet the requirements.

What's the deal here? It works like a charm on my desktop, but my laptop doesn't see it as a usable Ready Boost device.

Is ready boost embedded in Win7 or can it be downloaded as program? We have a laptop running XP that would benefit from it if we could run it.

It's part of the OS, sorry.

Cat, It makes me wonder if that could be fixed with the BIOS flash you have been considering. Might be worth a try.

Cat, I found this via a search ...
"I figured out the problem though. Going to USB Drive properties in the
device manager menu, you can select to optimize for performance or optimize
for removal. The Removal radio button was selected so I just clicked the
speed one, rebooted and viola! the drive works for ReadyBoost."

Is this a possibility with yours?

Cat - TrainableMan's suggestion should work for you.

I found the problem. It did not work because I was running a VM at the time. This was the reason I was wanting Ready Boost, to give me more power when running a VM. What I'm going to do is disable the device in the VM, so it doesn't recognize it, then it will help the main OS hold it's power (I hope).