ExtremeTech Reviews the ReadyBoost feature of Vista
09.20.06 - 10:01pm
Back in the day (2 months ago?) I did a brief review of Windows Vista and I quickly touched base with a new feature, ReadyBoost. With all operating systems the computer occasionally needs to store more temporary data than the system memory can hold. The operating system then uses a small portion of the hard drive for temporary data, correctly named the disk cache. Disk cache is considerably slower than system memory which can become apparent when you are heavily multitasking and maxing out the system memory. Programs will take many times longer to load and just the act of switching through programs can be painfully slow. ReadyBoost is a new feature within Vista that tries to rectify this issue with a temporary but useful fix.
ReadyBoost works by substituting flash memory for disk cache since the typical flash drive can sustain faster access times compared to rotating hard drives. ReadyBoost specializes in speeding up the fetching of small files in the range of 1 megabyte or less as this is where flash memory really excels. ExtremeTech has put together a great article explaining ReadyBoost in greater detail and actually tested 9 various flash drives for ReadyBoost compatibility. I would love to see RAID abilities with flash cache drives with the possibility of using 2 4 gigabyte in a Raid 1 setup to run a computer from. While I have no clue how this would operate when compared to some 10k RPM or 15k RPM drive, I bet there is some potential for using this idea within dataservers with small file queries.
Relevant Links
ExtremeTech
Microsoft ReadyBoost Q/A
That’s pretty damn cool.. using your USB stick as a cache. Why hasn’t Apple thought of this? I forgot the name of it but there is some mad expensive USB stick by the name of “rocket” something that is extremely fast. I wonder how Vista would benefit from that… and while we’re on the subject, I’d like to see some Firewire sticks. I know USB sticks are the norm now b/c every computer has a USB port, but I think a FW stick would be faster. Mmm, FW800 sticks..
How can we check/test Vista Readyboost technology……
You can find a list of ReadyBoost compatible USB flash memory drives here: http://www.readyboostmemory.com/