Readyboost and it's usefulness

I bought a 2 GB SD flash drive for my Zepto. I already have 4 GB so it's not like I needed it, but I thought what the hell, even if it gave little gains.


But it seems it actually made the computer perform worse? Reduced my 3dmark 06 score by 100, but maybe it increased load times a bit(havent checked it yet!?).


Basically I got the fastest flash drive I could get(x133 speed... 20 MB per second speed), and I dedicated all 2 GB to the readyboost(didnt need the storage).


Now I just want to know what the deal is, but I also heard that some people have been talking about something called ReadyDrive and something called Superfetch, but I don't really understand what they do, or what they got to do with flash based drives...


is anyone else using their flash cards? I thought I should use it since I have 64 bit vista and a 3-in-1 card reader, so I thought what the hell. But it's kinda weird that it makes the system slower! Is there any kind of drivers for readyboost, the flash drive or the card reader itself?

 

Well, it makes sense that it would make the system slower... since your memory is in dual channel, probably PC5300 so that's 10.6GB/s... which flash memory can't even begin to compare to. I see readyboost only actually being beneficial in systems with very little system memory. When readyboost was designed, it was when flash memory was dirt cheap but system memory was still expensive. Now, 1GB of PC6400 is about the same price as 4GB of flash memory. So why bother with the readyboost?

 

Well 3dmark06 scores fluctuate so dont worry about 100 points. The positive difference you may notice is your start up time is reduced....and with 4GBs of ram, that's about all your gonna get.

 

okay, so its not really making the system slower, or whatever? I can just leave it in?


Would it be performance hit, if I just used it as 4 GB storage?

 

Using it as storage won't slow the system, what causes the slowness is having the system constantly paging to the flash memory.

 

What if I installed some applications, like Photoshop or a computergame, on the flash drive, how fast would it run, compared to my 7200rpm hard drive?


and if I would do multitasking... for example, I always have Itunes open with other programs, would it be easier for the hard drive to deal with several applications at the same time?

so If I installed Itunes, would it make it easier on the system? a normal external hard drive would be way to slow right? unless it was firewire 400 right?

 

flash memory has much lower write speeds and generally higher read speed than standard hard drives. Firewire 400 is not as fast as USB 2.0, and you'd likely see pretty good performance from a USB drive. But to answer the main question - yeah, if you wanted to install a program to that memory it would probably take a long time to install, but the software would open more quickly than it does from your hard drive.

 

The 6625WD builtin cardreader is great compatibility wise(it even reads SDHC), however it's not superfast.

This issue was discussed sometime ago, please see this thread.

 

but would it be benerfical for the hard drive(and the rest of the system) to have a much used program used by a flash driver.


in other words, putting some of the tasks away from the main hard drive, and putting some of the other programs that often runs in the background onto other devices like flash drives and external drives.

so for example, would it be faster to run firefox, itunes and photoshop all from the c drive, or would it be faster to have firefox run from the c drive, but have itunes from flash drive and photoshop from external USB 2.0 drive!?

Basically the second option, would have two of the programs installed on other devices... but would it help performance? would it help spreading out the tasks, if the programs need to run at the same time!?

 

itunes will still be reading your music from C:\ and as for performance, it will only help load times. If you put your music on another drive it will help your performance though (IE, even with itunes installed to C:\ with all other programs, if you put your music on another hard drive it will help you as it won't have to read the music and other stuff simultaneously)