ReadyBoost and semi-stupid question

[snakefist]

Hi!

Errrr... How should I put this?

Will start with... a disclaimer? Yes, I'm a rather experienced user and well aware of the mechanics behind this dubious feature, as well as that it used not to help much if any (such when I tried it on even older machine with Win7 out of curiosity, not expectancy... on USB 2.0, to be fair).

Now: due to rather peculiar circumstances, my current main computer looks something like this:

AMD 750K; 2x4Gb DDR3 2133, Win10 Pro aaaaand... 3x2Tb hdds, 2 of which 5400rpm, Windows using one of them (swap file is, luckily, on 7200rpm one). I basically can't change anything with this unlucky deal OR add an internal SSD - don't ask

Soooo.... [sweating profoundly, looking around in discomfort]

*If* I add a 64Gb fast USB flash (such as 'now-Toshiba' EX-II, anyhow something relatively fast) as a ReadyBoast device - would something change? Of course that currently, I suffer from the pitiful speeds of my hardware... Of course that it annoys me, greatly...

Driving idea is that I'm buying a completely new computer in a few months and that I'll still need that flash for something else then (unlike, for example, external SSD, which is more expensive)... Does anyone have a positive (or any) experience with this kind of a shady business?

You *can* recommend me a device, but where I live we don't take kindly newegg and its special deals - de facto I'll have to buy what is available here... For instance, there is no way in hell that I can purchase much appraised Lexar device - I can look its picture and reviews and that's it.

Basic idea is to buy something that'll continue to be of some use, and invest all the budget in a new machine in a few months. With all the goodies. I need something to ease my everyday pain in the meantime...

 

[P4-630]

Well if you're on USB 2.0 only, it probably won't help at all.

 

[Sasqui]

I was curious myself and found this gem of an article. To sum it up

"You will not notice any difference with ReadyBoost enabled when you play games or you run applications that are CPU or GPU intensive. Also the improvements get smaller when you add more RAM. On a system with more than 4GB of RAM you will not notice anything getting better. ReadyBoost is most effective on systems with 2GB of RAM or lower. Also, adding an SSD drive to your computer means that there is no point in using ReadyBoost. We've done some very quick tests after adding an SSD and we quickly noticed that ReadyBoost becomes irrelevant."

http://www.digitalcitizen.life/does-readyboost-work-does-it-improve-performance-slower-pcs

Edit... MOAR:
To recap, here is a summary of the improvements you will get when enabling ReadyBoost on a system with low amounts of RAM:

• Opening media files like photos, music or video is slightly faster (approximately by 2%).
• The loading of web pages and the use of Office applications is slightly faster (approximately by 2%).
• Your system's boot timings are improved (up to 7%).
• Your most used applications start faster (by 10 to 15%).

 

[snakefist]

Hmmm, I thought it was clear that I have USB 3.0 and 8Gb RAM, also that I cannot install internal SSD (to be precise: any additional SATA device causes... problems; external SSD is something I'm actively trying to avoid because I really don't need one).

As for the article, I've read it (or something very similar) several years ago, together with few benchmarks (so it's probably the same one).

[It pains me to do this over and over, but forums are kinda closed communities where people without icons and low post count are treated like full-time amateurs by default. So:
- I *do* have 14 messages posted and it *says* 'joined in 2015. This is not my original username, and I'm here quite a long time - but mostly reading and typically having a low post count. Anyhow, at least 10 years and probably several more, and 20+ on other hardware sites.
- I decided to ask to post my question here because posters are better informed and more polite than most - otherwise, I use Google since main search engines were yahoo, excite and such - of course I did my research before simply posting here]

My *belief* - so, also a theory crafting - is also that nothing is likely to happen. However, USB flash drives technology is not what is used to be at the time when those articles were written and tests were taken - they advance on a daily basis while, unfortunately, my hdds are several years old.

I asked if someone has actual, real-life and recent experience with desperate measures like this one - so not too different than in googled article, except this is not Win7 anymore, I do have much more RAM, but hdds are still pretty slow. Painfully so. They are visibly struggling with some content and the whole system is slowed down. The situation with 64gb of today's fast flash disks is notably faster than it was ~5 years ago, also those are not the 8gb/usb2.0 disks used in that old benchmark.

I am sorry if I sounded arrogant. At least I didn't quote anyone and write sarcastic comments below . To be truthful, neither did posters who answered me (which is a difference from... some other hardware sites). If nobody has tried it (which wouldn't be a surprise, I too would hardly rely on ReadyBoost in any form, if installing SSD would be an option - but it will have to wait me to make a new system - rest assured it won't be based on any MS sick fantasy )

 

[eidairaman1]

Readyboost is an antiquated solution to machines that are very slow. I guess flash drives cost less than ram did then...

 

[alucasa]

It came out in Win Vista era when everything was crawling.

In other words, it's too outdated. Don't bother.

 

[eidairaman1]

It came out in Win Vista era when everything was crawling.

In other words, it's too outdated. Don't bother.

Yup Vista was a Fat n Heavy OS. 7 was trim. 10 is a hit n miss right now...

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

I'd say experiment with it all. Try a ram drive for apps and games, I've heard of some putting the pagefile on USB sticks too. Anything to get off the platter drives might be a speed improvement but might lag with longer access speed. You could even install win 10 on a usb stick for fun.

 

[snakefist]

Yeah, I think I'll have to try it and see...

I honestly don't expect anything noticeable, but maybe it'll be fun to try once - especially since lack of any reasonably new reviews. It'll be an experiment - I'll post any data on improvements (doubt they will noticeable, if any) here.

Having it as a comparison between 7200rpm hdd where it's now (ok, it's shared between all drives) would be useful, if nothing then to say 'another useless MS function - thanks for idea!

Though they *did* kinda changed it (ReadyBoost) since 8.1 or 7 - could be just an advertisement how ten ate eight...

I can also try to install win10 on it - I have already mine kinda-bootable-but-slow one - can't really advise anyone to do that, system boots forever - which I use if nothing else can help, on a remote server which I need to access physically, and not have right to... But it's more of reboot-then-go-to-lunch solution - that one I can confirm in personal experience, it's slow as hell but with a poor, poor flash of ~1gb/min real life transfer.

My question was more inline with 'i-did-it-and-it-changed-my-life' theme. Apparently, it is not (but I'll try it anyway - external ssd equals 'money unreasonably spent' at this moment - better to invest 50eur more in something... less upgradable later, lots and lots of storage is kinda my 'fair computer use' policy.

 

[RejZoR]

ReadyBoost is pointless because it's reset on every system restart. What idiot designed this feature...

It could be used to speed up HDD's by hooking an internal SSD and activating this feature on it. But no, they never improved it and never removed this dumb resetting. 3/4 of people could be running hybrid HDD/SSD storage systems by now. I sometimes just don't understand Microsoft...

EDIT:
Hint, buy some cheap SSD, up to 128GB, buy Romex Software PrimoCache and activate this SSD as a SSD cache for your HDD's. Win. It'll constantly cache frequently used apps on the SSD and it's permanent, so you'll benefit from it the moment software loads its driver during bootup.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

ReadyBoost is pointless because it's reset on every system restart. What idiot designed this feature...

It could be used to speed up HDD's by hooking an internal SSD and activating this feature on it. But no, they never improved it and never removed this dumb resetting. 3/4 of people could be running hybrid HDD/SSD storage systems by now. I sometimes just don't understand Microsoft...

EDIT:
Hint, buy some cheap SSD, up to 128GB, buy Romex Software PrimoCache and activate this SSD as a SSD cache for your HDD's. Win. It'll constantly cache frequently used apps on the SSD and it's permanent, so you'll benefit from it the moment software loads its driver during bootup.

I guess you didnt read the actual thread entirely

Hmmm, I thought it was clear that I have USB 3.0 and 8Gb RAM, also that I cannot install internal SSD (to be precise: any additional SATA device causes... problems; external SSD is something I'm actively trying to avoid because I really don't need one)

 

[damric]

With vista and 7 you can make a small ram disk drive and set it to ready boost. That will be light years faster than using a usb drive. If no ssd option i would at least put browser cache on a small ram disk also.

 

[RejZoR]

I guess you didnt read the actual thread entirely

My entire post still stands correct either way. ReadyBoost is retarded because it gets reset on every system restart. Be it USB drive or internal. With Romex Software PrimoCache, you can overcome that with USB drive or internal. Plus several other things. With USB 3.0 or 3.1, it is somewhat feasible option even though USB drive controllers are usually more primitive. But it should still be faster than mechanical HDD with random reads.

 

[kn00tcn]

as a mechanical user, i dont get it... once windows boots, with 8gb ram, it's quite fine, i'll never understand you ssd people until i actually use an ssd

what exactly is the problem? something loads slow or causes chop? are you sure the cpu isnt part of the problem? how are the drive benchmarks?

as for that vista comment, i am offended, my vista sp2 ran fine in 2008 to 2013 & those same parts are still fine on 7, there is little difference! not my fault launch vista was bad or that people used low end hardware (mine was q9550 overclocked but stock isnt going to cripple, then again i always tweak & turn garbage i dont use off, maybe indexing is painful but i wouldnt know)

 

[FYFI13]

@RejZoR has a very good point - it won't stick after reboot. Otherwise it could be a good feature in some cases.

as for that vista comment, i am offended, my vista sp2 ran fine in 2008 to 2013 & those same parts are still fine on 7, there is little difference! not my fault launch vista was bad or that people used low end hardware (mine was q9550 overclocked but stock isnt going to cripple, then again i always tweak & turn garbage i dont use off, maybe indexing is painful but i wouldnt know)

We're minority that actually loved Vista. I used it since beta and it worked just fine on my PC, didn't even want to think about Win XP after that. I had to buy a new printer and webcam for it, but that was it. If Vista's performance was equal to Windows 10 i'd be using it today.

 

[kn00tcn]

We're minority that actually loved Vista. I used it since beta and it worked just fine on my PC, didn't even want to think about Win XP after that. I had to buy a new printer and webcam for it, but that was it. If Vista's performance was equal to Windows 10 i'd be using it today.

well there are a few perks of 7 that i'd miss in vista (like reordering taskbar, yes still in classic text view)

plus after all the linux i've been trying out these days, some of the features of windows are getting annoying (at the same time some of linux is annoying)

i adore aero though... 60fps vsync with window animations & the glassy look, not to mention the perfection that is segoe ui font at size 9 (unfortunately that turns to crap when you raise dpi)

 

[RejZoR]

@RejZoR has a very good point - it won't stick after reboot. Otherwise it could be a good feature in some cases.


We're minority that actually loved Vista. I used it since beta and it worked just fine on my PC, didn't even want to think about Win XP after that. I had to buy a new printer and webcam for it, but that was it. If Vista's performance was equal to Windows 10 i'd be using it today.

I've tested it on my hybrid HDD/SSD setup. When it works, the HDD and SSD combo was really fast and since it's an OS feature, you don't have any compatibility issues or glitches. But some idiot designed it to reset on each boot. Which means you don't benefit from it on system bootup speeds, in fact it does the opposite. Since it wants to repopulate the SSD cache after boot, you'll have high HDD load for extended duration after each boot. Not to mention totally unnecessary load on SSD in terms of writes. PrimoCache hardly made any and I always had like >75% read cache hit ratio with minimal writes once it was fully populated. ReadyBoost will write full drive capacity (at 100% cache utilization) on every system startup. If your drive is 128GB, it'll basically do that amount of writes on every boot. Which is just insane. There is some discrepancy because it's using a mild on the fly data compression, but still.

 

[Athlonite]

Does you mobo only have 3 SATA ports on it and why can't you use a small 64~128GB SSD in it to boot from

 

[snakefist]

Heh, argument about booting would be good if I'd actually turned computer off sometimes - it's pretty much on 24/7 and last time I rebooted it was due to some persistent upgrade before new year - but of course you couldn't know about those weird specifics

Basically, anything that puts hdds under stress is slow - few games I play, browsers with many tabs - basically anything with random read/write of smaller files.

CPU is definitely a problem too, as well as MB which, for a reason unknown, causes crashes if 4th SATA device is connected - tried that with different hdds, even if two dvd writers and two hdds are connected (ok, that was just for experiment, but still - two dvd writers doing *nothing* caused frequent system crashes). MB has 6 SATA ports, and all of them work... just as long as only 3 are connected - trust me, it was my first instinct to change SATA cables places and cables themselves, power cables etc - didn't help. Since I'm kinda addicted to my preciousssss... data, replacing one hdd is not an option...

Anyhow, it will all be solved with the new computer, hopefully soon... In the meantime, I'll try to use flash as ReadyBoost and as the pagefile storage (thanks for the tip again, it's just a theory but sounds viable) - I used to experiment alot back in the days, but my spare time is reduced greatly now.

As for MS being a bunch of morons, I couldn't agree more - there's like a thousand existing ideas which could speed up existing systems *if* they were supported natively (RAMdisks, for instance - they are even less useful than in 8086 times). Even the brilliant idea of having program files, my documents, \windows\temp and pagefile.sys (fragmented, of course) on the same drive by default on multidrive system is... well, would it hurt to ask if I'm fine with it? (no, I'm not and that's the first thing I change when installing windows, but I guess good amount of users don't know or understand importance of that - also, snake-oil software seems to miss this flaw too)

 

[jaggerwild]

You know sense you have been here for years, or what eva then you should know that we are not mind readers! Hence why you need to post up your full system sepc's. You mention a mother board and CPU, but not what they are or brand.

 

[Athlonite]

If that's the case try a PCIe to M.2 card and use that if you have an free PCIe slot only has to a x1 or x4 slot but you can also use a x16 slot aswell

I use something similar to this but for an Sandisk 128GB SSD out of an Apple Mac it has a non standard connection type but works pretty well

Random Read 4 KB 122.2 MB/s 4 % Disk Drive #5 [APPLE SSD SD0128F] (113.0 GB)
Average Read Access 0.04 ms 1 % Disk Drive #5 [APPLE SSD SD0128F] (113.0 GB)

 

[snakefist]

System specs and mind reading in general...

...and I also asked for real-life experiences, *not* theories based on pre-existing knowledge (though I've found one ad hoc made rather viable - as a theory, of course) - that required only normal reading skills

I posted what anyone *needs* to know about the configuration, you may think that you need GPU model or PSU power, but this case you really don't. Explain me *why* exactly you need anything that I haven't posted already and why is it relevant for a post asking for *experiences* (I'm not a mind reader also), not some ad hoc theory, and I'll be happy to provide them. Not that they're secret or anything...

CPU - I posted that, namely "AMD 750K" and that was pretty specific. MB is ASRock FM2 A75 Pro4 - I fail to see how it's relevant. I can list my PCI sound card (SB Audigy 2) or other parts, if it'll help anyone expressing *real-life* experiences with ReadyBoast on/off, depending on MB type and model. That machine was pretty low range even when I bought it (I bought two, in fact, cause I needed them at the time, and they pretty much had to be best bang-for-a-buck), so Cooler Master 500W PSU is like twice what I needed (and also irrelevant, since SATA hdds use like ~8watts). Oh, now I listed it all now... Except RAM manufacturer, and <80Watt GPU, that I'll keep as secret, muahahahahaha

@Athlonite - that's quite a decent suggestion and I probably do something alike if I were not into a new machine buying process. I'll have real SATA or M2 SSD then, price, budget and performance dependent. A question was meant primarily for (hopefully - very) short time solution and based on 'not spending any money on old machine' premise (I'll need a decent flash drive regardless).

But it's done already, one supposedly fast 64gb flash drive purchased, I'll post results (if any relevant) after I test it... Be warned, it may take some time - family, work etc... Not as much time for testing as I had once

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

as a mechanical user, i dont get it... once windows boots, with 8gb ram, it's quite fine, i'll never understand you ssd people until i actually use an ssd

what exactly is the problem? something loads slow or causes chop? are you sure the cpu isnt part of the problem? how are the drive benchmarks?

as for that vista comment, i am offended, my vista sp2 ran fine in 2008 to 2013 & those same parts are still fine on 7, there is little difference! not my fault launch vista was bad or that people used low end hardware (mine was q9550 overclocked but stock isnt going to cripple, then again i always tweak & turn garbage i dont use off, maybe indexing is painful but i wouldnt know)

Everything in a computer requires multi GB bandwidth and HDD allow up to 200mb I think that disparity explains us ssd yoots.
Ready boost is ok on 7 but burnt out two USb drives quick for me back in the day.

 

[Athlonite]

With having 8GB of ram already I doubt you'll see alot of difference since ready boost was primarily designed for systems with less than 4GB but go hard you never know right it might work

 

[kn00tcn]

Everything in a computer requires multi GB bandwidth and HDD allow up to 200mb I think that disparity explains us ssd yoots.

requires!? no... everything is arbitrary, it's just numbers of X per second

you would need solid gigabit internet to saturate a hard drive when saving a large file

almost every common application or use of data gets loaded into ram on first launch, it's not like the relatively slow hard drive acts like ram unless you're constantly paging

sata users have that 550mb/s limit, so if an application in question took 12 seconds to load on a hard drive, 4 seconds on an ssd, even though 4x faster sounds great, that's still 'only' 8 seconds difference, not the biggest deal when it only happens on first launch (vague math, 130mb/s drive vs 500something mb/s ssd, does not account for the fact that usually the cpu has to do some calculation upon loading which increases latency or decreases throughput)