ReadyBoost Randomly Stops Working

Hi,

I have a 1GB SD Card in my internal card reader. ReadyBoost works fine after Vista boots, but randomly it suddenly stops. So when I go to the device drive in My Computer it says "Please insert a disk into drive x:" or it opens the SD drive fine, only the drive is empty.

I have to reinsert the card or goto the drive properties and click "OK" (because under ReadyBoost it's set to use the device and this forces the ReadyBoost to turn on again).

Has this happened with anyone else? I've read about this happening to someone's desktop, so I don't think it has anything to do with my laptop model or the brand of my internal reader, or the SD cards speed. I think it has something to do with SD cards in general though. A 512MB USB key works indefinitely. Even my iPod Nano works without a hitch (though with no real boost...I think Vista misjudged it's speed when I plugged it in).

Thanks for any advice!

 

You need to be careful to use the Safely Remove Devices in Windows. Windows is very finicky about yanking out removable drives, and sometimes I have never gotten them to work again without a lot of fixing.

I don't know if that has to do with what you are talking about, but it's certainly possible that hot-swapping ReadyBoost devices causes Vista to be confused.

The reason why the drive is empty is because you have set ReadyBoost to consume all your space on the SD card! You can verify that easily by taking your SD card to a non-Vista machine and seeing that there is a cache file that is unreadable, usually of a very large size.

 

Do you have your latest media card reader drivers?

 

Hi Gautum, your post is actually way off. I never remove the device, ReadyBoost stops working on its own. I do have to either restart or unsafely remove it after this happens. But only because safely remove is no longer an option. It's a 1GB card and Vista wants 850MB of it for optimal performance, which I approve. The SD Card really does go blank, like 955MB or something free (whatever a clean format gives on 1GB), I tested this by copying several large videos to it with no warnings/conflicts/errors. But anyway, wouldn't the drive be FULL if I let Vista use all of the space?

I think we need to think more on the track of is this an SD card specific problem. ReadyBoost works fine with other media. Is there anyone who can test this out?

Hi link1313, not sure, kind of a trick question. I use the XP drivers from Acer's panam site. There don't seem to be any drivers at all for this machine that were made for Vista. Except for the x1600 that came out a few weeks ago.

 

Did you try other formats or other SD cards?

 

I've tried FAT and FAT32 for this card, it's the only one I have over 128MB. But like I said USB keys work fine, and even my iPod Nano stays working. I guess the problem isn't as common as I thought. Maybe I'll try this again in the Acer forum. Perhaps it's the card reader and not SD Cards + Vista.

 

I suspect your card reader driver is actually a Beta.

Hell I'm using Vista 64 and I don't even have a card reader driver yet for my RICOH SD reader.