I have a SanDisk Extreme 120GB SSD, alas, driven only by a SATA-2 capable motherboard. Would a thumb drive Readyboost help performance? All my thumb drives are USB 2 (but I do have an active USB 3 adapter in the system). I have various sizes from 128MB to 32GB -- does size matter?
No, thumb drives are slower than your SSD. Also, Readyboost really only arguably helps with small memory footprints
Well I looked at your system specs you listed in your profile and it says you have 8gb of ram,usually thumb drives will only help about if you got low amount of ram like 1gb or a slow hdd. I don't believe it will help your system,ssd's are already really fast and you have 8gbs of ram.
As soon as you add a SSD the ReadyBoost feature isn't even recognized any longer as your disk is the fastest source.
Thanks for the input. I'm always in the market for cheap performance improvements. I'm afraid now that the next significant step would be to get an up-to-date motherboard that supports SATA-6, a faster (I7) processor, 16GB RAM, and faster graphics cards. Might as well start a new build as to do all of that. So, I'll muddle along with what I have. Occasionally Photoshop drags down a little, but that is rare. I should probably consider myself blessed with what I have.
Thanks to all for your input!
As mentioned, Readyboost is only helpful when you have a LOW amount of memory.
It's all but useless with anything over 1.5-2GB of system ram.
It probably wouldn't make any difference to performance as it would largely go under utilized.
Make sure you're running a Clean Boot with no freeloaders as shown in Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7.
I would also want a perfect install following the best practices for Win7 as given in Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7- same steps for retail.
I recently did a Clean Reinstall with the Windows 7 update disk (the only one I have); it went fine.
The only problem I have is that since last month when I replaced my "C" drive (a Western Digital Raptor) with a SanDisk Extreme SSD, I occasionally get dumps, which take about 60-80 seconds to complete, but locks me out from doing anything while the dump takes place.
For what it is worth, I recently had a complete system lockout (could not even boot up in safe mode) and took it to local repair person. He removed all the hardware, tried to boot with one of his test drives, and got the same result. So he reset the BIOS and it booted fine. He then installed one device (starting with C, the SSD) at a time, an, with the exception of the occasional dumps, works like a charm.
Websquad,
Explain to me what is a "dump" mean to you? As we normally use that word, then a dump is very fast. Are you referring to your syste hanging, blue screening, or what.
Since there seem to be some misconceptions about Readyboost, then I'm including some links for your perusal.
Keep tabs on ReadyBoost with Windows 7's Performance Monitor _ Microsoft Windows _ TechRepublic.com
Monitoring ReadyBoost on Windows 7 - Saveen Reddy's blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs
ReadyBoost - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
ReadyBoost - Windows 7 features - Microsoft Windows
ReadyBoost Performance Test _ Windows Vista and Windows 7 Help
ReadyBoost with a SD card or a UFD Usb flash drive
Take a closer look at ReadyBoost features in Windows 7 _ Microsoft Windows _ TechRepublic.com
Windows 7 Readyboost Really Boosts _ Connected Internet
Quote