USB as Power Boost? Vista Tips Discuss USB as Power Boost? in the Windows Vista forums; It should work. I say should because not all USB storage devices have the specs to work with ReadyBoost....

[felix8406]

It should work. I say should because not all USB storage devices have the specs to work with ReadyBoost.

[Znod]

felix says yes. And, I think I recall cases where others have used mechanical, rather than flash, drives for ReadBoost. However, keep in mind that the benefits of ReadyBoost do not appear to be great even with the best of devices. And, I see no reason to think that disk access would be faster with an external mechanical drive than one's internal. If not, then one would get essentially no performance boost from ReadyBoost (if any or perhaps even less)--not that it provides much in the first place..

[jayaustin]

Most external hard drives are going to be to slow to use with ready boost. They are the sam speed as an internal hdd. The hdd is slow compared to memory. If it wasn't slow, then we would not have to rely on RAM. We could read directly from the drive. Flash memory is much faster. If ready boost were to use an external hdd, the preformance would most likely drop. Consider what happens when your computer starts using the swap file because your memory is to low.

[crabby]

My Vista has asked if I want my 20GB PVP to be used for ready boost! A laugh every time

crabby

[felix8406]

Does your 20GB PVP have discs like a HD? The reason I ask is because Jay mentioned the swap file, so even though the 20GB PVP might be slow for ReadyBoost, it might still be faster than the swap file. I don't know if it'll make a difference though. Just a thought.

[felix8406]

I don't know if this listing is here or not, but just in case. It provides a list of USB drives that work with Vista's ReadyBoost feature. http://www.vistaflashdrives.com/?gcl...FRWFIwodm1-9iw

[Znod]

Originally Posted by felix8406

I don't know if this listing is here or not, but just in case. It provides a list of USB drives that work with Vista's ReadyBoost feature. http://www.vistaflashdrives.com/?gcl...FRWFIwodm1-9iw

It's wasn't here before felix. Good addition.

[crabby]

Originally Posted by felix8406

Does your 20GB PVP have discs like a HD? The reason I ask is because Jay mentioned the swap file, so even though the 20GB PVP might be slow for ReadyBoost, it might still be faster than the swap file. I don't know if it'll make a difference though. Just a thought.

My PVP is literally a hard rive with a case and screen strapped to it I haven't bothered trying to use it as I have never used more than 60% of my RAM.

crabby

[felix8406]

So it's just basically a 7K RPM HD inside an enclosure. That'll never do any good for ReadyBoost, even if Vista allows it. However, I can imagine some cool/fast flash drive coming out to take advantage of ReadyBoost.

[Snuffy]

http://www.vistababble.com/forums/vi...ed=1#post17104

Due to something in this post. I decided to retest all my USB Speedboost devices. Seems that MS added some refinements to Performance Upgrades.
I have 3 USB devices which I used to TEST SpeedBoost. after running all three permanent plugin in back of system.. and selecting the fastest one to use/test for some time... later i removed and have (IMHO) seen very little or no difference in the long hall for USB Speedboost.

Using the same program to test, I found that one of my OLD SLOW DEVICES was actually now the fastest device I had... the device I had been using was tested at 12.2 MB/s which was faster than the specs for single mode devices. the the 2nd device was still rated at 9.9MB/s for single mode (not bad), and WOW the last device now is rated at 19 MB/s in dual mode (17 MB/s average) .. making it much faster than in all prior tests...
(just maybe the The Vista performance fix pack, KB 938979, (both 32- and 64-bit versions)) had more in it than first thought. Worth testing all your devices again.