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CMB

2 Intern

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181 Posts

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December 11th, 2007 17:00

ReadyBoost

I am trying to use a SanDisk Cruzer Micro drive 256MB and ready boost. The flash drive is capable of 13MB/s Write and 15MB/s Read speed, and as far as I knew Windows Vista required the following:
  • 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

  • According to my specs, I am well above that. I have an XPS 420 with USB ports in the front and rear. I have tried in the front and rear without success. I cant imagine this system would be USM 1.1....Any suggestions?

    slowecsl

    222 Posts

    December 11th, 2007 19:00

    I'm not familiar with the XPS 420, but is there an option in the bios to change the USB port speed from Fullspeed (1.1) to Highspeed (2.0)?
     
    I know it's an option on our Dell Latitudes and the default is Fullspeed on these systems.
     
    Dell Precision M6300
    Bios A00
    Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2ghz
    4096mb DDR2 @ 667mhz
    NVidia Quadro FX 1600M (8700M GT)
    Hitachi 200gb 7200 rpm HD
    PBDS DVD+RW
    SigmaTel C-Major HD Audio
    Broadcom NetXterme 57xx Gigabit
    Dell 1505 Draft-N WLAN
    Dell TrueMobile Bluetooth 360
    Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit

    kirkd

    4 Operator

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    5.2K Posts

    December 11th, 2007 19:00

    Published read/write speeds for flash drives and memory cards are for sequential R/W of large files. ReadyBoost needs the required speeds for small files. There is a big difference. I had thought that most Flash Drives would be good enough, but... I have a SanDisk 2GB Cruzer, which works OK. Most normal camera memory cards will not work. I found one claimed to be 150X which barely made the cut. A lot of these devices use a mix of fast and slow memory, mostly slow. These will not work. There is a place in Vista Event Viewer which lists the actual results that Vista obtained, but I can't remember where it is.
     
     
    I think I found it again:
     
     
    To find out the R/W speeds, go to the Registry:
     
    HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\EMDMgmt
     
    and then the flash drive to see the speeds. My Cruzer got Read = 3.3 MB/s and Write = 3.8 MB/s, which is about twice the minimum.
     
     
    Dimension 9100, Dual-Boot Win XP / Vista Home Premium, 3.0 GHz P4, 3 GB DDR2 533 MHz RAM, 160 GB SATA II Samsung (XP), 300 GB SATA II Seagate (Vista), 250 GB SimpleTech USB (WD Drive), Nvidia Go 6800 (425/825 MHz - XP, 400/800 MHz - Vista, Vista Driver - 163.75), Dell 1901 UltraSharp FP

    Inspiron E1705, Win Vista Premium, T7200 Core 2 Duo (4MB, 2.0 GHz 667MHz), 2 GB DDR2 677 MHz RAM, 120 GB Samsung HD, Nvidia Go 7900 GS - 156.69 Driver, 17” Sharp UltraSharp TrueLife Wide-Screen WUXGA


    Message Edited by KirkD on 12-11-2007 03:33 PM

    Message Edited by KirkD on 12-11-2007 04:09 PM

    kirkd

    4 Operator

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    5.2K Posts

    December 11th, 2007 21:00

    This means the read speed was only 25 kB/sec, which is very slow. The write speed was not tested as the read was a failure. My USB external hard drive got a 265 kB speed. Sounds like you have a bad drive.

    CMB

    2 Intern

     • 

    181 Posts

    December 11th, 2007 21:00

    I went into the registry and it doesnt show me anything I understand...It Says WriteSpeedKBs 0x00000000(0) and ReadSpeedKBs 0x00000024 (36)

    CMB

    2 Intern

     • 

    181 Posts

    December 11th, 2007 22:00

    I set up my WD MyBook External HD and allowed windows to use 4 GB. It seems to be working, but I dont know if there will be any real noticeable difference. I have 3 GB of RAM.

    kirkd

    4 Operator

     • 

    5.2K Posts

    December 11th, 2007 22:00

    You will not see any improvement; probably will be poorer with ReadyBoost as the system has to write to both the internal and external drives to maintain the cache. And the external drive is slower than the internal where the cache is stored. I saw improvements with 1 and 2 GB RAM using ReadyBoost, but slight degradation in performance with 3 GB. One thing that helps is to set the cache to a fixed amount of space. Set both the minimum and maximum cache size to the same value (say 4096 MB). This will result in less disk thrashing during the boot-up.
     
    Dimension 9100, Dual-Boot Win XP / Vista Home Premium, 3.0 GHz P4, 3 GB DDR2 533 MHz RAM, 160 GB SATA II Samsung (XP), 300 GB SATA II Seagate (Vista), 250 GB SimpleTech USB (WD Drive), Nvidia Go 6800 (425/825 MHz - XP, 400/800 MHz - Vista, Vista Driver - 163.75), Dell 1901 UltraSharp FP

    Inspiron E1705, Win Vista Premium, T7200 Core 2 Duo (4MB, 2.0 GHz 667MHz), 2 GB DDR2 677 MHz RAM, 120 GB Samsung HD, Nvidia Go 7900 GS - 156.69 Driver, 17” Sharp UltraSharp TrueLife Wide-Screen WUXGA

    njs1

    1 Rookie

     • 

    140 Posts

    December 11th, 2007 22:00

    I've successfully used a 2 GB Sandisk Cruzer Titanium.  It didn't speed things up, though.  In fact, I think it slowed things down very slightly.  These things are only useful at speeding things up if you don't have enough RAM installed (like if you only have 1 GB of RAM), then they might really make a noticeable improvement.

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