Will USB 3.0 Take ReadyBoost to New Levels?

[BillS22]

I just read about USB 3.0 External Hard Drives.

Are Thumb Drives next?
Is a 5GB/sec ReadyBoost Drive in the future?

 

[pparks1]

A 5GB/s ready boost drive is called RAM and it already exists.

 

[obarthelemy]

RAM is NOT persistent

ReadyBoost is.

So RAM does not replace/make redundant readyboost.

 

[rixto003]

OT: ise RAM u get from readyboost useful? (does it make ur PC better, or is it just virtual RAM?)

 

[kucing13]

I think it is

 

[Fumz]

ReadyBoost is.

So RAM does not replace/make redundant readyboost.

Actually, RAM renders ReadyBoost superfluous.

 

[whs]

Regardless how fast the USB connection may be, it does not make the USB sticks any faster. There is anyhow only a very narrow "market" for Ready Boost - just systems with 512MB or 1GB of RAM. And the performance gain is not fantastic. Nothing beats RAM - the more, the better.

 

[Krispy1]

5gbps is theoretical speed not actual speed. actual speed is usually a 10th so usb 3.0 will probably have transfer rates around 500mbps. either way real ram works better with the system then readyboost

 

[A Guy]

A system that uses usb3 and SATA 6 Gb/s can probably have a minumum 16GB Ram. If you aren't starting with at least 4Gigs Ram, it's a crime . The thought of ready boost at that point becomes moot I'd think. A Guy

 

[darkstar420]

USB 3.0 and Ready Boost

Actually, most of you ARE incorrect.

Ready Boost works to speed up read/write speeds by caching frequently used content to a USB drive.

Even with USB 2.0 you get a fairly decent increase in boot times, and USB 2.1 is 480mb/sec while USB 3.0 is 6gb/sec which is substantially faster.
Universal Serial Bus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
USB 3.0 standard is
Universal Serial Bus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Asus seems to have the best USB 3.0 ports which are MUCH faster than standard USB 3.0.

So the idea is to use a SATA3 3tb drive and then a 8 or 16gb USB 3.0 memory stick for additional caching.

My favorite combo is a 64gb SSD SATA3 + 3TB SATA3 + 16gb of dedicated cache memory, Using Asus X79 RAM cache.

With this setup not only does a 3TB 7200RPM drive perform like a SSD it tops out max performance for SATA3. Damn near instant load times.

So the three techs are

Microsoft Ready Boost with USB 3.0 Asus USB Boost
ASUS - The Best USB 3.0 Experience - USB 3.0 Boost

Asus SSD Caching
ASUS X79 - SSD Caching - YouTube

Asus RAM Cache
ASUS X79 - RAM Cache / RAM Disk - YouTube

BTW 32gb of DDR2400Mhz Quad Channel memory powers my setup. G.Skill
Most definitely is overkill but its so nice to have...

In the future I want to get a second 3TB SATA3 and add another 64gb SSD SATA3 drive for caching.

 

[whs]

This sounds like a fairy tale. I fail to see the advantage of ready boost - especially with your amount of RAM. And caching the HDD may give a little advantage, but it does not make the HDD spin any faster and the access time is still slow. If you enable caching, you have the same effect as with your complicated setup.

 

[MickeyT2008]

Readyboost really works well so long as you use one of our much faster USB 3 memory sticks from now, five years in to your future. Memory sticks outpace mechanical hard drives today and there's no head seek time to accumulate whilst reading in countless tiny files which bog mechanical drives down, such as when booting up the operating system. Readyboost is all about being a disk cache, some mistake it for a memory cache, it has nothing to do with how much RAM you've got. However today's solid state hard drives greatly outpace today's fast memory sticks, thus rendering Readyboost pointless for anyone other than those who only have mechanical drives but have a USB 3 interface

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Readyboost really works well so long as you use one of our much faster USB 3 memory sticks from now, five years in to your future. Memory sticks outpace mechanical hard drives today and there's no head seek time to accumulate whilst reading in countless tiny files which bog mechanical drives down, such as when booting up the operating system. Readyboost is all about being a disk cache, some mistake it for a memory cache, it has nothing to do with how much RAM you've got. However today's solid state hard drives greatly outpace today's fast memory sticks, thus rendering Readyboost pointless for anyone other than those who only have mechanical drives but have a USB 3 interface

Are you aware you responded to a five year old thread?

 

[SIW2]

I found it an interesting post, nevertheless.

 

[Khzyvfonhes]

I'm running on 16gb/ram, and no swap file. More ram.... More speed.

Ready Boost is absolutely useless in a system with more than 2 or 3gb/ram.

 

[MickeyT2008]

Are you aware you responded to a five year old thread?

Yes, I was bored. A dead conversation thread is one that nobody's responded to for a long time, which this one no longer is. Readyboost is a topic that still comes up now and again

 

[MickeyT2008]

I'm running on 16gb/ram, and no swap file. More ram.... More speed.

Ready Boost is absolutely useless in a system with more than 2 or 3gb/ram.

Readyboost is a disk cache. It obviously helps in low memory situations where the page file will be hitting the disk all the time. However it's main purpose as a disk cache is useful with any amount of system memory if you're using slow hard drives, slower than the cache provided by the USB memory stick. The reason it's always been considered pointless is that USB 2 interfaces and the memory sticks available when Readyboost was introduced were very slow. I've tried it with a fast USB 3 mem stick on my friend's PC that has no SSD. It made the whole operating system run much more smoothly and stutter far less. You don't notice the difference when you plug it in because it's got to fill, it's if you take it away again then you see just how poorly it performs without it. Of course if you've got SSD's then it's not needed but in that situation Windows 10 (and possibly the others) won't allow you to set it up anyway, stating that there's nothing to gain.

The Readyboost cache and SSD drives share the same advantage over mechanical hard drives, there's no head seek time so none to accumulate when loading in thousands of tiny files as it hunts all over the drive for them.

As for answering old posts, the question of how useful Readyboost is is something that still comes up. I found this thread whilst reading about it and other people will too. And it's no longer a dead conversation thread either

 

[Layback Bear]

Readyboost in today's computers is as useless as nipples on a barn door.
It was intended for slow drives with very little ram in the system.

pparks1 in post #2 said it best.

A 5GB/s ready boost drive is called RAM and it already exists.

Just my thoughts.

Jack

 

[MickeyT2008]

Readyboost in today's computers is as useless as nipples on a barn door.
It was intended for slow drives with very little ram in the system.

pparks1 in post #2 said it best.



Just my thoughts.

Jack

My own PC has an SSD and 32GB of RAM so I have no need of it either, but there are situations when it does make the computer run better. To benefit the memory stick has to be faster than the hard drive and its USB interface has to be fast enough, so basically it has to be USB 3. Hard drives tend to top out at about 140Mbps and get bogged down when serving up lots of small files, even a memory stick that can't exceed that 140Mbps will still win when it comes to serving up those small files first.

And of course memory sticks aren't very expensive and have other uses so if it doesn't improve a specific machine then nothing much was lost by trying.

 

[MickeyT2008]

Are you aware you responded to a five year old thread?

It's an eleven year old thread now. Have a nice day!