With the arrival of Windows 7, there is a new feature called ReadyBoost. For a while, there has been talk of how you can instantly speed up your computer by simply plugging in a USB stick and BAM, you have extra RAM to work with! This feature is also available on Windows 8 and Windows 10.
Not really. First, ReadyBoost does not replace actually adding additional physical memory to your computer. It is a fact. Now will it help improve the performance of your machine? Yes, but it depends on the circumstances.
Overall, I didn’t notice much difference in using ReadyBoost on Windows. For example, opening programs like Office, Adobe, etc. They barely changed with or without ReadyBoost.
For some reason, this helps to shorten load times. I noticed a rather noticeable difference in boot times on my Windows 7 computer. However, it was not noticed using a USB stick. Instead, I used the SD card built into my computer.
Also, starting with Windows 7, ReadyBoost now supports multiple flash drives, so I really noticed a nice performance boost when using multiple drives. And note that Windows 7/8/10 ReadyBoost is much more efficient than Windows Vista ReadyBoost.
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If you have a Windows Vista machine, your best bet is to upgrade to Windows 7/8/10 to get all the ReadyBoost benefits. Also, in Windows 7/8/10, you can format your flash media to NTFS or the new exFAT file system. This allows ReadyBoost to create caches larger than 4GB.
One more point to consider. I’ve noticed an improvement in opening apps on Windows after enabling SuperFetch. This is another new feature in Windows Vista and Windows 7 that preloads applications into your memory so that they load very quickly at startup.
If you have SuperFetch enabled and have ReadyBoost enabled on Windows as well, you can really see big benefits. Again, I didn’t see this benefit in Windows Vista. Perhaps this is because it is not as optimized as it was on Windows 7/8/10.
And one more thing to consider. If your computer already has a lot of RAM (4GB +), you probably won’t see any benefits if you’re running Windows 7/8/10, using multiple flash drives, etc. It just won’t need a lot of RAM with it. memory.
I tested this on a very old computer that I had and there was a significant advantage when your computer had crappy specs. I doubt most computers are that old now, but if you have 1GB or less of RAM, you will see the benefits of using ReadyBoost.
You can also go crazy with Windows 7/8/10 as it allows you to use up to 8 sticks! The more disks you use, the better the performance, because having multiple parallel sources to read data is faster than just one.
If this is all a little confusing, I’ll try to break it down into a few simple points below:
1. ReadyBoost is really useful for those with 1GB or less RAM
2. ReadyBoost works much better on Windows 7/8/10 than on Windows Vista, so please update
3. ReadyBoost performs better depending on what type of media you are using: flash drive, SD card, CompactFlash, etc., so try different types of media.
4. ReadyBoost also works differently depending on which file system the media is formatted on, so try FAT32, NTFS and exFAT.
5. If your computer has a solid state hard drive, ReadyBoost won’t matter, so you don’t need to use it.
6. Using multiple flash devices with Windows 7/8/10 results in much higher performance.
7. Don’t forget to enable SuperFetch with ReadyBoost to maximize performance.
8. ReadyBoost won’t matter much if you already have 4GB of RAM or more
9. ReadyBoost will never be faster than increasing the physical amount of RAM on your computer.
If you’ve used ReadyBoost with Vista or Windows 7/8/10, please leave a comment here and let us know if it improved performance for you or not. Also let us know which medium you used, how it was formatted, etc. Enjoy!
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