Can a flash drive really be used as ram?

[jr1ststreet]

A friend of mine was telling me this and we had a big debate about it so i just wanted to hear from the experts, so can a flash drive really be used as ram or is he just being an ass.

 

[boohbah]

it depends on the speed of the stick but yes ,its called ready boost.
more here

ReadyBoost - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[whs]

It is kind of a retarded RAM. What it does is that Superfetch puts pages on the stick from where they can be retrieved faster than from a spinning disk (because sticks usually have a faster access time (e.g. 1ms) than spinning disks which are more in the 15ms range).

It really only has an effect if you have a small RAM (512MB or 1GB) and a fast stick. For any RAM 2GB or bigger it makes no sense because there is a certain overhead with Ready Boost that will work against you - it needs to write the pages to the stick and to the disk.

ReadyBoost - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Sardonicus]

There's really no substitute for adding more RAM to a 64 bit machine, especially while it's so cheap.

 

[jr1ststreet]

i hav 1.5gb will it make a difference?

 

[seavixen32]

You can try it, but you'd be better off installing more RAM if you can.

You can always run Crucial's memory scanner, which will advise on the best RAM setup for your computer.

http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/dra...id=i3FOrDiKbQgAAI1i:20111102201800:s&mpch=ads

 

[whs]

Check the performance of your stick with HD Tune. Let it run till the end, else you do not get the access time. Post the result here. Then we can tell you whether it is worth it.