ReadyBoost - Setup and Use

How to Setup and Use ReadyBoost in Windows 7​

   Information

Windows 7 supports Windows ReadyBoost. This feature uses external USB flash drives as a hard disk cache to improve disk read performance. Supported external storage types include USB thumb drives, SD cards, and CF cards. Since ReadyBoost will not provide a perfor¬mance gain when the primary disk is an SSD, Windows 7 disables ReadyBoost when reading from an SSD drive.

This will show you how to setup and use ReadyBoost in Windows 7 with USB flash drives and flash memory cards to help speed up your computer.

However, you most likely will not notice any increase in performance if your computer meets or exceeds the minimum system requirements of 1 GB RAM (4 GB recommended) for 32-bit Windows 7 OR 2 GB RAM (8 GB recommended) for 64-bit Windows 7 installed.

   Note

External storage must meet the following requirements:

• Capacity of at least 256 MB, with at least 64 kilobytes (KB) of free space.The 4-GB limit of Windows Vista has been removed. For ReadyBoost to effectively speed up your computer, the flash drive or memory card should have at least 1 GB of free available space.
• At least a 2.5 MB/sec throughput for 4-KB random reads
• At least a 1.75 MB/sec throughput for 1-MB random writes
• You can enable or disable ReadyBoost for a specific flash drive or other removable storage device (ex: memory card).
• Windows 7 shows you how much space it recommends that you allow it to reserve and use on the flash drive or memory card for optimal performance at the bottom of the properties window. (See screenshot below step 4B below)
• If your flash drive or card doesn't have enough available space for ReadyBoost, you'll see a message telling you to free some space on it.
• For best results, use a flash drive or flash memory card with at least double the amount of available space as the amount of memory (RAM) in your computer.
• There's a limit of 8 flash devices (EX: USB flash drive or memory card) that could be used at once for ReadyBoost with a max of 32GB of ReadyBoost space per device for a max total of 256GB per machine.
• Should you have the USB flash drive formarted as FAT32 or NTFS:
  • The FAT32 file system has size limitations. While you cannot have a FAT32 partition greater than 32 GB (32728 MB), you also cannot save/store a file larger than 4 GB on a FAT32 partition. This limits you to only being able to use up to 4 GB for ReadyBoost on a USB flash drive formatted with FAT32.
  • To be able to use more than 4 GB for ReadyBoost on the USB flash drive, you would need to have the USB flash drive formated with NTFS instead.

For more information about ReadyBoost in Windows 7, see:

• USB and SD storage media – ReadyBoost with a SD card or a flash drive | Microsoft Support
• Understand ReadyBoost and whether it will Speed Up your System

   Warning

• If your Windows 7 is installed on a solid-state drive (SSD), you may not see an option to speed up your computer with ReadyBoost when you plug in a USB flash drive or flash memory card. This is because SSD drives are faster and they're very unlikely to benefit from using ReadyBoost.
• In some situations, you might not be able to use all of the memory on your device to speed up your computer. For example, some flash memory devices contain both slow and fast flash memory, but ReadyBoost can only use fast flash memory to speed up your computer.
• ReadyBoost cannot beat the performance gain by just adding more RAM in your computer instead.
• ReadyBoost uses the Superfetch service that needs to be enabled and set to be "Started" and "Automatic".

Here's How:
1. Plug a USB flash drive or flash memory card that you want to use ReadyBoost with into your computer.

2. If AutoPlay pops-up, click on Speed up my system. (See screenshot below)

A) Go to step 4.
OR

3. If AutoPlay does not pop-up, then open the Start Menu and click on Computer. In Computer, right click on the USB flash drive or flash memory card, and click on Properties. (See screenshot below)

4. To Turn On ReadyBoost

A) To use all of the flash drive or memory card free space for ReadyBoost

• Select (dot) Dedicate this device to ReadyBoost. (See screenshot below)

B) To specify how much free space on the flash drive or memory to use for ReadyBoost

• Select (dot) Use this device. (See screenshot below)
• Either slide the slider or enter the amount of free space you want to reserve to ReadyBoost.
  NOTE: See the note box at the top of the tutorial for details about how much free space to use.

5. To Turn Off ReadyBoost

• Select (dot) Do not use this device. (See screenshots above)

6. Click on OK.

7. You will see this for a brief moment while Windows 7 configures the ReadyBoost cache on your flash drive or memory card. (See screenshot below)

   Tip

To Temporarily Remove the ReadyBoost Device
NOTE: If you wanted to temporarily remove the USB flash drive or memory card that ReadyBoost is currently using, then this will show you how to safely remove it.
1. Open the Start Menu and click on Computer, then right click on the USB flash drive or flash memory card being used by ReadyBoost, and click on Eject. (See screenshots below)

A) Click on Continue. (See screenshot below)

B) Go to step 3.
OR

2. Click on the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the notification area on the right side of the taskbar, then click on the USB flash drive or flash memory card being used by ReadyBoost to eject it. (See screenshot below)

3. When you see this, it is now safe to remove the USB flash drive or flash memory card. (See screenshot below)

4. When ready, you can just plug the USB flash drive or flash memory card back in to have ReadyBoost automatically start using it again.

That's it,
Shawn

Related Tutorials

---

• How to Speed Up the Performance of Windows 7

 

[The Apathetic]

For some odd reason, when I click on readyboost from the properties menu it tells me that my brand new flash stick (8g kingstone) can't be used for readyboost, it's completely empty, I even tried formatting it to NTFS and it still didn't work.

What exactly should the flash stick be like in order to be used in readyboost?

 

[whs]

For some odd reason, when I click on readyboost from the properties menu it tells me that my brand new flash stick (8g kingstone) can't be used for readyboost, it's completely empty, I even tried formatting it to NTFS and it still didn't work.

What exactly should the flash stick be like in order to be used in readyboost?

Reason is that it is too slow. Run HD Tune on it and then on your HDD. Your HDD is probably faster than the stick.
It is very hard to get any advantage from Ready Boost and really only for RAM sizes of 512MB and 1GB. You can forget it for bigger RAMs. And even then the stick should have access times under 1ms (although slower ones are permissable).

 

[The Apathetic]

Okay, thanks man .

 

[Prisoner]

Interesting... I used a 2G flash drive and set it dedicated to RB..
I want to turn it off so I can transfer a file between computers, and when I try to disable RB, it doesn't recognize that the flash drive is used for it, so I can't disable it. I try deleting the RB cache file, it doesn't work. How would I get rid of it?

 

[whs]

Do a quick reformat on another system.

 

[Prisoner]

That's what I was thinking of, whs. Will do.

 

[nunjabusiness]

Don't need another system.
Just reformat the thing.

I have added, removed and replaced dozens and never had an issue.

Important!
If you want to use an 8GB drive, FAT is no good. You must format it in exFAT.
Then 7 will see the whole thing as usable for RB.

WHS is correct though, in that it must be seen as fast enough by the OS. I don't use regular flash for RB, I use SDHC cards of at least class 4.

 

[whs]

Don't need another system.
Just reformat the thing.

Yeah, sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. Another system is the safe way, but you can always try the same system.

 

[chuckbam]

I have an SSD so my Readyboost option is disabled. I would like to enable it anyway. Can someone help me with that?

 

[whs]

I have an SSD so my Readyboost option is disabled. I would like to enable it anyway. Can someone help me with that?

That is not possible and would not buy you anything (apart from additional overhead). The reason is simple, the SSD is minimum 10 times faster in access time than any stick.

 

[chuckbam]

I have an SSD so my Readyboost option is disabled. I would like to enable it anyway. Can someone help me with that?

That is not possible and would not buy you anything (apart from additional overhead). The reason is simple, the SSD is minimum 10 times faster in access time than any stick.

I am not interested in performance increase, I just want to enable Readytboost. I took a good look around and there are all kinds of components of Readyboot in the register. I attempted

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\rdyboost
Start from 0 to 3, and could not boot.

Why is it not possible? Was a component not loaded during the install? I even have Readyboots folder in Prefetch. But no service is listed.

 

[Tews]

What do you hope to gain?

 

[chuckbam]

What do you hope to gain?

I want to gain the ability to have the option. I don't like when Windows takes options away from me. I want to benchmark using a USB 3.0 SSD. Just because someone may not know how to do it, does not mean there is no reasons to do it.

 

[brianzion]

i found these monitors its in German but easy to translate
SuperbarMonitor

 

[whs]

i found these monitors its in German but easy to translate
SuperbarMonitor

Easy to read - LOL.

 

[Brink]

i found these monitors its in German but easy to translate
SuperbarMonitor

Thank you Brian, but this link may be better for that program since it's translated in English.

Google Translate

 

[brianzion]

i found these monitors its in German but easy to translate
SuperbarMonitor

Thank you Brian, but this link may be better for that program since it's translated in English.

Google Translate

thanks

 

[Torongo]

Is it possible to dedicate amounts of your own system's space to this task. For example - could I use 4 gigabytes on C drive to speed up my system, instead of using my flash drive?

~Joshua~

 

[chuckbam]

Is it possible to dedicate amounts of your own system's space to this task. For example - could I use 4 gigabytes on C drive to speed up my system, instead of using my flash drive?

~Joshua~

Could you please tell me the steps to set that up? I have 2 SSD and am interested on doing that.

 

[whs]

Is it possible to dedicate amounts of your own system's space to this task. For example - could I use 4 gigabytes on C drive to speed up my system, instead of using my flash drive?

~Joshua~

Could you please tell me the steps to set that up? I have 2 SSD and am interested on doing that.

Maybe I did not get it. But what are you guys trying to accomplish. Ready Boost was intended to overcome the (access) speed limitations of the rotating disks by moving the page file from the disk to a fast USB stick. I stress fast meaning sticks that have access times of less than 1ms or alike (rotating disks typically have 15 to 17ms).
If you replace an area of your disk to perform that service, you really only buy the Ready Boost overhead and do not gain an iota. In the case of the SSD you only have to keep the page file on the SSD (against the advice of many "experts") and you have the optimal setup.
Note also that there is really nothing to be gained with Ready Boost with RAM sizes 2GB and larger. E.g. a system with 4GB of RAM will hardly ever produce a page fault under normal use. Exceptional applications such as CAD may differ.