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The $20 Trick

SummerDays

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For those who don't know this one:

Buy an 8 GB Flash Drive (or more), and plug it into your computer.

Click on the properties of the drive. You'll see a tab that says: Readyboost.

Then click on use this device.

Windows will start writing files to this drive sequentially instead of your HD.

You may have to format it for NTFS to use the whole 8GB.
 

newtekie1

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Too bad Readyboost doesn't really help if you have 2GB of RAM or more...

It does wonders if you have less 1GB of less though!

And of course most cheap flash drives aren't fast enough for Windows to use for readyboost.

I actually prefer using a cheap Class 6 SDHC card in a cheap 3.5" flash card reader. That way nothing is sticking out of the computer, the card is entirely in the flash reader. Makes moving the computer around easier.
 

theonedub

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I thought it was tested and ready boost is only beneficial when you have 1gb Ram or less. If people want fast drives and cant go SSD there is always the option for a RAM disk.

EDIT: Dang my slow ass typing
 

SummerDays

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I'm using a 4GB DDR3 Ram disk on my computer now. Is there one that can be formatted to NTFS?

I ran a test of a 1 GB drive here and only got 10 MB/s read rate.

I'm tossing this suggestion in the garbage!
 
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windows7news.com said:
The situation couldn’t be more different with Windows 7, as Readyboost is finally delivering against Microsoft’s promises. More and more users are finding that not only does Windows 7 Readyboost improve boot and shut-down times, but they also offer speed improvements that are really useful.

Maybe Summer is onto something :) Or maybe Windows7news.com is owned by Microsoft or Flash manufacturers ;)

Regardless, haven't found any tests done showing a difference and I have't since Vista, so maybe things have changed. When I get back home I have a couple 4GB sticks I could try (along with the 4GB limit, gone is the single unit limit.)
 
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dam me and my 8 gigs, lol! i wanted to do that, ive done this before and it actually speeds it up a little not miracle work though
 

cdawall

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my SSD is faster than readyboost on a USB drive
 
D

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It was still a good suggestion for a lot of people.....no reason to trash it
 
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cdawall

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Oh shutup!:p

lol the fastest thing to boost a 32bit machine is to get 6-8GB of ram and allocate everything over what 32bit addresses to a ram drive with your OS installed to it (a bunch of sites tell you how to do this)
 

Polarman

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A lot of comparative reviews were made about the benifits of readyboost.

Conclusion yeilded better result just by adding extra ram.
 
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