Ready Boost - Mystery

Hi...

I have 2 Dell XPS410 Computers, virtually identical except for an additional CD/DVD and Media Card Reader in one of them.

I converted the "first' Machine from Vista Enterprise to Win 7 Enterprise over a month ago and all things went well. I then converted the "second" machine from Vista Ultimate to Win 7 Ultimate this week, and lets say basically, its done (it was a long road...)

On the "first" machine I have max 4GB RAM, and a 64 GB flash drive running ReadyBoost, and there, all things went well and that machine works great.

But on the second machine I have an IDENTICAL flash drive (64 GB) and it wont run ReadyBoost saying the "performance" of the flash drive is not up to snuff. I tried putting in an 8 GB flash, and that runs ReadyBoost just fine.

So, can anyone shed some light on why IDENTICAL flash drives, in relatively IDENTICAL machines - and one runs, one does not. Is it the OS? Hardware? Any insights?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks...

Have you checked the flash drive that's in question on the first machine to test it and see if it works on that machine? Does the flash drive have anything on it? Does it have a lock on it?

Hi BassFisher,

Thanks for the reply. I am a bit ashamed to say "no", I didnt try swapping the flash drives - but I will do that today and see what happens. No, the flash drive has nothing on it - its empty. And no, it does not appear to be locked - that is, there is no lock on it, and I can read and write to it which I did test.

Let me try the swap idea and see what happens. Thanks very much for your help!

Hi again BassFisher,

Well, your suggestion WAS the answer... I took the flash drive from the first machine and moved it to the second, and then took the one I was using in the second and put it in the first. BOTH worked! I now have 64GB flash drives in each machine and they both function just fine.

I feel kind of lame for not trying this before, but alls well that ends well and thanks are due to you, so...

Many thanks!

Andy

Hi,
I use a couple of 32 gb flash drives on my main systems for readyboost cache. I would recommend you use exfat to format them if you have not already as this very much improves performance.
Tony.

Tony...

Thanks for the reply. Can you tell my why exFat would be better than the Fat32 these flash drives came formatted in? I have them both working and I see a nice difference - will exFat increase the speed over Fat32?

Thanks!

Andy

Hi Andy,
The simple answer is it handles large files more efficiently and the bigger the drive gets the worse FAT32 gets.
Read info here.
exFAT Versus FAT32 Versus NTFS | a Tech-Recipes Tutorial

Indiana,

Thanks for the advice and the link. OK, youve made a great case and I will reformat these babies with exFat.

Thanks very much for the tip and the reply!

Andy