Is Ready Boost on Windows Worth Using?

Is Ready Boost on Windows Worth Using?

ReadyBoost is a feature that uses external USB flash drives as a hard disk cache to improve disk read performance. Supported external storage types include USB thumb drives, SD cards, and CF cards. Since ReadyBoost will not provide a performance gain when the primary disk is an SSD, Windows 7 disables ReadyBoost when reading from an SSD drive.

So basically Ready Boost is your mini ram that is useful for making your computer booster especially the one using windows increase in the performance matery, but is it really worth using? Here in roonby we are going to tell you “Is ready boost worth using?”

What is ready Boost?

Source : onlinecmag.com

ReadyBoost (codenamed EMD) is a disk caching software component developed by Microsoft for Windows Vista and included in later versions of the Windows operating system. ReadyBoost enables NAND memory mass storage devices, including CompactFlash, SD cards, and USB flash drives, to be used as a write cache between a hard drive and random access memory in an effort to increase computing performance.

ReadyBoost relies on the SuperFetch technology and, like SuperFetch, adjusts its cache based on user activity. Other features, including ReadyDrive, are implemented in a manner similar to ReadyBoost. There are some requirement if one external disk is going to be made into a ReadyBoost which is :

• Capacity of at least 256 MB, with at least 64 kilobytes (KB) of free space.
• The 4-GB limit of Windows Vista has been removed.
• At least a 2.5 MB/sec throughput for 4-KB random reads
• At least a 1.75 MB/sec throughput for 1-MB random writes

The most effective way to determine whether a specific flash drive meets ReadyBoost requirements is to test it. Windows Vista and Windows 7 automatically test removable storage when attached. If a storage device fails the test, Windows will automatically retest the storage on a regular basis.

How To?

Source : www.pcstats.com

As you can see in the picture, you could automatically speed up your system with ready boost by just clicking on the “speed up my system” button on the autoplay, but if you couldn’t do it or if you disable the autoplay system, then you could right click your usb drive in the my computer section >> Properties >> Click on the ReadyBoost Tab >> and then use your space on your disk to make your Computer a bit faster.

Windows 7 use the Windows SuperFetch algorithm to determine which files should be stored in the cache. SuperFetch monitors files that users access (including system files, application files, and documents) and pre¬loads those files into the ReadyBoost cache.

All files in the cache are encrypted using 128-bit AES if the flash storage device is removable, but hardware manufacturers can choose to disable encryption on internal, non-removable ReadyBoost devices. It is because the ReadyBoost cache stores a copy of the files, the flash drive can be removed at any point without affecting the computer—Windows will simply read the original files from the disk.

When Will Ready Boost Work?

Source : www.inteligentcomp.com

ReadyBoost provides the most significant performance improvement under the following circumstances:

• The computer has a slow hard disk drive. Computers with a primary hard disk Windows Experience Index (WEI) subscore lower than 4.0 will see the most significant improvements.
• The flash storage provides fast, random, non-sequential reads. Sequential read speed is less important.
• The flash storage is connected by a fast bus. Typically, USB memory card readers are not sufficiently fast. However, connecting flash memory to an internal memory card reader might provide sufficient performance.

Computers with fast hard disks (such as 7,200- or 10,000-RPM disks) might realize minimal performance gains because of the already high disk I/O. ReadyBoost will read files from the cache only when doing so will improve performance.

Hard disks outperform flash drives during sequential reads, but flash drives are faster during non-sequential reads (because of the latency caused when the drive head must move to a different disk sector).

Therefore, ReadyBoost reads from the cache only for non-sequential reads. ReadyBoost creates a disk cache file named ReadyBoost.sfcache in the root of the flash drive. The file is immediately created for the full size of the specified cache. However, Windows will gradually fill the space with cached content.

To monitor ReadyBoost performance, use the System Tools\Performance\Monitoring Tools\Performance Monitor tool in the Computer Management console and add the ReadyBoost Cache counters. These counters enable you to monitor how much of the cache is currently being used and when the cache is read from or written to. But it does not tell you exactly what performance benefit you are achieving by using ReadyBoost.

So Based on the data that we found, ready boost does work, but it only does a significant increase in performance for computer or a laptop that has a minimal ram to support your work, for Laptop or computer with ram over 1 GB it doesn’t do much.