Memory Boost

[Pghpooh]

HI
I was browsing around some web sites and came across Memory Boost a feature in Windows Vista.
I am curious,, does it work????
I have a HP laptop with 2 gig of ram. A few weeks ago I found out from HP that the ram can?t be increased. I tried the Crucial and other web sites and none of them show any update or ram to increase the capacity of my laptop.
If this does work what brands of ram can I use and what should I look for?
I just did a quick look around and it seems like usb drives might work.
I am not too keen on having a usb drive sticking out of the side of my laptop all the time.
Will any flash cards such as those used in cameras work?? Some have extremely high transfer rates.
As you can see I barely know what I am talking about at 3am!! LOL
Pghpooh

 

[Yellowbeard]

You need a FAST USB flash drive to utilize Ready Boost in Vista. But, with 2GB of system memory you will see little to no gain unless you are fully using that amount of memory AND thrashing the HD with page file activity.

 

[Comdrpopnfresh]

readyboost uses flash storage as a buffer for the pagefile on the disk. So the flashdrive or SD card or whatever else doesn't supplant the pagefile, it just reduces the access times to the data. So, if you pull out the readyboost media, you don't lose any data. The more memory you have, the less a system is reliant on paging to disk, and readyboost will provide diminishing returns as installed memory amounts increase. You could get a little performance bump from using readyboost w/ 2gb memory installed. Just make sure the space on the media reserved for readyboost is comparable in size to the pagefile. Windows defaults the pagefile to 1.5x the size of installed ram.

Sometimes laptop manufacturers err on the side of caution when they report max memory sizes. For example, I have a dell e1505 and dell says it can only handle 2gb of memory if it is installed in a 2x1gb configuration across the slots. I put a 2gb dimm in, and it works fine. I've also read of people putting 2x2gb in the same model I have. Give it a try if you can return the memory, or if you read forums online where other have successfully done it on your model.

I use a 2gb SD card from Adata w/ a 50x speed rating for readyboost in my laptop- it's very nice to leave it in the sd slot and not have a flash drive hanging on. One thing you can do if your flash device is just under the required speed is to go to the hardware options and select 'optimize for performance' or the like... vs 'optimize for quick removal'. This is one case where removing a device with that setting enabled doesn't result in data loss, as mentioned above on how readyboost works.