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Boost your performance with ReadyBoost

Published in Multiple CategoriesWindows 7 Performance Tweaks
Windows Vista Performance Tweaks
 by Steve Sinchak with 380,144 views and 16 comments

ReadyBoost helps your computer by giving it more high-speed memory.  If your computer is running low on RAM then it has to kick a lot of applications out of high-speed physical memory to the paging file on your hard drive.  This usually results in a big hit in performance and increased activity on your hard drive. ReadyBoost helps this situation by giving Windows an alternative to having to stick data into the slow paging file on your hard drive. Instead, ReadyBoost uses a USB storage device that is faster than a hard disk. This results in a performance boost because Windows will have a high speed alternative than using the slow paging file on your hard drive.

In order for ReadyBoost to work, it requires a USB storage device that meets minimum performance and space requirements:

  • The device must be at least 64 MB
  • The device must be USB 2.0
  • It has to be able to read at 3.5 MB/s
  • It has to be able to write at 2.5 MB/s

If you are unsure if your USB storage device meets these requirements, just give it a try anyways. To get started using ReadyBoost, follow these steps:

  1. Plug in USB storage device.
  2. Go to Computer and right click on the removable storage device and select Properties.
  3. If your device is compatible, you will see a ReadyBoost tab. Click on that.
  4. Select Use this device and select the amount of space on it you want to dedicate for the ReadyBoost system file.
  5. Click OK and you are finished.

If you have more questions about ReadyBoost, check out Tom Archer's blog.  He has a great FAQ about ReadyBoost posted.

 
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Comments
Athlonite
3 years ago
so what happens if you have all that and readyboost still refuses to work and says the usb device isn't fast enough when it actually is as it has work on another machine perfectly fine
Anm
3 years ago
Thanks...it does work fine on an SD Card 2Gb - 133x, but can't hardly notice a change yet. I have used the recommended setting 1810Mb out of the 1910Mb aviable and got already 2,00Gb Ram installed.
John F.
3 years ago
Normally you're limited to a 4GB max size for a USB flash drive used for readyboost. The limitation is because the flash drive is formatted FAT. If your computer supports exFAT (Windows 7 RC and Vista SP1 do) then reformat the thumb drive exFAT and you can use ones larger than 4GB. I'm using a 16GB USB Flash Drive, and the improvement is impressive. I recently upgraded from 2 to 3GB of RAM as well. Adding the 16GB USB flash drive for ReadyBoost (about $35, around the price of 1GB of RAM) immediately made an orders of magnitude larger difference than adding the 1GB of RAM. I don't think I could ever go back now. It definitely speeds up the virtual XP mode in Windows 7. I think it caches the entire virual machine. Widowns 7 is just downright scary fast now.
Tweaks 4 PC
2 years ago
I've tried this on my laptop PC, and it really seems to help.
Thanks for sharing the good info here and on your blog.
CB
2 years ago
I've got a 16GB flashdrive. It was originally formatted as FAT, and would only use 4GB for the readyboost. I reformatted it to exFAT, hoping to use all 16GB for the readyboost, however now readyboost tells me that it only supports FAT and NTFS. Im running Vista 64 Bit so I don't know why John F is able to do it and I'm not, it would be nice however.
JMF
2 years ago
exFAT is not supported in Vista. Vista SP1's ReadyBoost supports NTFS, FAT16 and FAT32. Windows 7 also supports the new exFAT file system. Vista SP2 does not support ReadyBoost for exFAT file system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyBoost
JMA
2 years ago
so can i also use more than one USB? like 4gigs+4gigs+4gigs?
or will it only recognize one of the three installed??and how can i
that it is working quantitatively??can i see it on the performance tab
of task manager?
Marian
2 years ago
I have 4 gb of ram would this help. I have a click free device for back up couldI use it for readyboost? Thanks
Small J
2 years ago
This is super cool....Works fantaticallyyyyy!
Maggy Rond
2 years ago
In some cases Windows 7 will refuse to use readyboost because it reports that it would not give additional speed. In my case (Intel i7, internal SATA SDD as boot/program drive, external USB2 SDD as data drive) I guess Windows is correct. I'm afraid only more, and faster RAM or a battery operated ramdisk could give me more speed. Both still beyond my budget.
DS
2 years ago
Correction: Ready boost will work on MOST flash enable devices. These, not limited to, Hi-speed flash drives, memory cards, express memory cards, etc.
zxzzxzxz
2 years ago
It's only good for those that have small amounts of ram.
Bob
2 years ago
It works great, but results vary depending on what you have and what you use it for. If you already have a solid state hard drive and a lot of RAM, it probably won't do anything for you. If you have an older machine without enough RAM and a 5400rpm hard drive, it's like coming out of the dark ages for very little money spent. For most people who sit somewhere in between, you'll probably get a nice bump in performance. I use an 8Gig ExpressCard memory card instead of a USB flash drive, because it slides all the way into my laptop and doesn't stick out like a thumb drive does. Reformat it to NTFS if you just wanna use it for extra memory, and you can leave it plugged in "permanently", and use the entire capacity for improving your performance. In my case, I have a bunch of Virtual Machines on my laptop, and since I have 4Gig of physical RAM to dole out, each VM only gets 512k or 1Gig... Using readyboost and the ExpressCard, I can give each VM 2Gig of RAM and I'm not always going to the hard drive and eating up my laptops battery reserve while the hard drive whirs and paint dries. Not as fast as real RAM, but WAAAAYYY faster than caching to the hard drive all the time, and for a mere 18 bucks. Win/win!
Pochi33
One year ago
This may be useful in some cases, but its a waste of money. A module RAM is much cheaper than a flash drive, besides being infinitely more efficient.
Brandon
One year ago
Ive got 4 gigs of ddr3 on my dual core laptop. Windows 7 was fast already and I used a 2 gig SD card for readyboost. The performance increase is real. Like John said, scary fast.
Athlonite
One year ago
It has to be able to read at 3.5 MB/s
It has to be able to write at 2.5 MB/s

you might want to add that it must be able to read and write those speeds using 4KB and 512b (byte) file sizes.. if you usb stick or sd card can't then buy one that can as no amount of friggin round with it will make it read/write 4Kb and 512byte files any faster
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