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Windows Vista and ReadyBoost
Thursday, November 16th, 2006
Windows Vista has a cool new technology called ReadyBoost that allows you to use a USB 
memory stick to speed up your computer. As I discussed in my Windows Vista Community Site column, ReadyBoost isn’t a substitute for system RAM memory, but it does speed up your overall system and provide additional resources. And let’s face it, Vista needs all the memory help it can get. In a future blog I’ll have some direct comparisons of how much ReadyBoost helps as compared to adding system memory, but for many of us there isn’t really a choice. Adding system memory is either not possible, or prohibitively expensive with where RAM prices are right now.
Unfortunately, not every USB key drive is ReadyBoost compatible. I’ve been getting a lot of email asking me for specific recommendations, so I thought I’d cover some of the basics here, while detailing some of my own results with supposedly high speed USB memory devices.
The first requirement is that the USB drive be at least 512 Mb in size. Any less and Vista will decline to use the drive because it isn’t fast enough. The drive must also be USB 2.0 HiSpeed compatible and be plugged in to a 2.0 HiSpeed port. Again, if this minimum requirement isn’t met, Vista won’t use the drive because it isn’t fast enough to really help.
The next requirement is that the drive be fast enough to actually help. I don’t know what the specs need to be for the drive, but I didn’t really see this as a big issue when I wrote that column. After all, the very first drive I tried, a fairly old, 512 Mb Crucial Technologies Gizmo! drive I just happened to have lying around, worked perfectly. Well, imagine my surprise when readers started asking me for specific recommendations because their supposedly high speed drives wouldn’t work. So, I started trying various drives I had around, and even went out and bought an expensive and supposedly high speed drive from OCZ - the Rally 2 to try it out. x(perts)64 : Windows Vista and ReadyBoost
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