Does Ready Boost Work in Windows Vista Beta 2?

Earlier today my parent's bought me a 1 Giga Byte USB Flash Drive (call it an over due birthday present), I plugged it into my Dell XPS 600, Installed the Driver, Re-booted and turned on Ready Boost, however, I do not notice any difference in System Memory. Does Ready Boost work in Windows Vista Beta 2 (I am avoiding using Build 5472, due to it's File and Printer Sharing Issue's), or will I have to wait until RC1 comes out to try out Ready Boost? Thanks in Advance.

Kevin John Panzke (MSDN OS Level Tester)

http://www.kevinpanzke.com/

Kevin - Readyboost does work in Vista 5384. However, whether you see any results depends on how much RAM you have. There is no built in way to measure, but if you start decreasing RAM, you will sewe improvment with RAM below 1 gig. At 1 1/2 gig its almost a non issue amd at 2 gigs, forget it.

In summary, its there, but unless you are running low amounts of RAM, you will not see any improvement.

"Kevin Panzke" wrote:

Thanks for the Quick Reply, My Dell XPS 600 has 1 Giga Byte of Ram, just fyi.

"JackM"

I was curious about Readyboost and wondered if it would improve my computers performance. If you say is true (and I have no reason to doubt what you say) and since I already have 1.5 gb of RAM, then it would not do anything that I would notice. That saves me a few hard earned shekels from being wasted that could find better use elsewhere.

William

JackM wrote:

I think you would see a perf boost under load with 1 or 1.5 GB of ram. But only if the flash drive met the specs for ReadyBoost. Many do not. At 4GB of ram I don't think you would see much perf boost, however.

See this article by Charlie Russel:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/community/enhancements.mspxScroll down for the section on ReadyBoost.

Also listen to this TechNet Radio program on performance enhancements in Vista, including ReadyBoost.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/tnradio/archive/ayers.mspx

"William"

Colin: If I remember correctly, while testing Readyboost, Vista would not allow what it considered an improper flash drive to be configured. So what you get is what Vista approves.

Also, only tested on a FX-55 box with dual Raptors in RAID0 which I assume could be a factor in the diffeence between our experiences.

"Colin Barnhorst" wrote:

As stated previously - Vista is "picky" about using USB flash drives - not all will do. Capacity of drive when used as Ready Boost will not be "added" to memory total - ,as you know Windows, regardless of the amount of memory installed, still "reserves" virtual memory on the HD - Ready Boost actually functions as virtual memory - probably why you can install or remove the drive without any effect on computer operation.

"JackM"

Tom Archers blog on ReadyBoost is by far the best info out there.

My experience is:ReadyBoost's test to check to see if your flash drive is fast enough sucks. I hope they put out a utilitiy that shows how close your drive is.Why do I say the test sucks, and not my drive...welllll.. I have a PNY Attache 4 GB drive. I have used it as a ReadyBoost drive successfully on 2 machines, BUT NOT EVERY TIME. This last time, it took me 6 plug-unplug cycles, changing through 4 USB ports, and finally it worked when at the end of a USB extention cable, on a port that it had not worked on direct 5 mins before.

On my other machine I had to plug-unplug 3 times, and I reformatted it twice.On my laptop(where it would do the most good) it has never been tested as successfull.

I have 4GB of Ram on this machine, and Vista recommends a setting of 3830 MB for it. ReadyBoost compresses the data, so that is about 7.5 GB of data on the drive.

As mentioned, this is not 'added" to Real Ram, nor is it added to Virtual Memory..As I understand it, it is used as a write through cache of the Virtual memory cache(and SuperFetch cache) which reside on your hard drive, thus speeding up loading of recent/common apps(SuperFetch) and decreasing hard disk access for other VM tasks.

I hope they get a testing tool(so I can figure out the Laptop Issue) and some best practices info to try to figure out why it will pass the test 1 in 5 times or so...By the way, once it tests as fast enough, it will keep working through restarts, etc.

"AJR"

On Sun, 20 Aug 2006 21:18:33 -0500, Kevin Panzke wrote:

Agree with what the rest of the team say about not being added to regularmemory, but here I use a Lexar Jump Drive and it works perfectly on myVista build and even though I have 2Gb of memory on board I have noticed aslight improvement in speed at times. Most noticeably when working withOutlook 2007.-- Tekguru (Daron Brewood)MS-MVP/Mobile Devices

Webmaster: UKs largest Pocket PC Site
http://www.4WinMobile.com

It is mirroring what is also being written to the page file. Since the flash drive is faster than the hdd, you see a perf boost since Vista will look to the flash drive first. Since it is mirrored with the page file, removing the flash drive does not destabilize the system.

"Tekguru (Daron Brewood)"