Windows Vista - ReadyBoost Technology

[IceBreakerG]

I've been looking around alot of threads and websites that have been discussing Windows Vista Beta 2 (there's almost an endless number of threads on it), but one of the more interesting features that I think is included in Vista is also one of the least talked about. ReadyBoost is basically a way of using a USB flash drive as a hybrid between extra memory and virtual memory.

I find this technology very interesting mainly because the cost of USB flash drives have dropped significantly over the last few years (I remember working at Circuit City and CompUSA a few years ago and 128MB flash drives were around $100+). So even if you have a system with a limited amount of memory, this might be a way to give your system a small boost.

This is basically what I've learned about ReadyBoost so far. I haven't been able to try it yet on my installation of Vista Beta 2 (the gpu fan on my laptop stopped working causing my GeForce Go 6800 to "idle" at like 70C and my 2.0GHz Pentium M processor is stuck at 800mhz instead of running at 2.0GHz which pretty much makes Vista unusable). But, I found this blog entry from Tom Archer, who works with Microsoft, talking about ReadyBoost. Hopefully this will give everyone a little insight on what it is, what it does and how to use it:

http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/04/14/576548.aspx

Also, here's a FAQ from the ReadyBoost project manager Matt Ayers as well:
http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx

 

[Brentx]

Good read. I think this will be very interesting. Now my question is, will ReadyBoost help people with really fast computers (like a RAID0 config with 2gigs of ram and a Athlon fx-60) or just slower computers?

 

[IceBreakerG]

Originally posted by: Brentx
Good read. I think this will be very interesting. Now my question is, will ReadyBoost help people with really fast computers (like a RAID0 config with 2gigs of ram and a Athlon fx-60) or just slower computers?

From what I've been reading, in a way its geared more towards mobile users and users with limited amounts of memory. If you have 2GB+ of RAM then you probably won't see too much of a gain but you may still benefit from it (paging out memory to the flash drive will be faster than paging out to the hard drive). Also, if you're on a laptop and you're battery power, paging out to the flash drive will reduce the hard drive spin up/down cycles thus saving battery life (every little bit helps you know). But I'd say its more of a memory thing than anything else.

The main reason this will be a benefit is because the random access times on a flash drive is much faster than the random access time on a hard drive, so paging out to a faster, lower power consumption device seems like a good idea. But I definately think this will benefit mobile users more than anyone else. But like I said earlier, I can't test this yet myself (I don't have a big enough/fast enough flash drive and my laptop is kinda screwed up at the moment until Dell fixes it this week).

 

[Nothinman]

Seems like a bandaid on a broken arm. While I can see the benefits of not spinning up the hard drive and such, I'd rather they spent time on fixing the performance of the core VM system.