Readyboost

[Urbwolf]

Hello all,

Have a question regarding Readyboost. I have a my book essential 1TB and a 186 gb MTD external HD. Both say divice cannot be used for Readyboost. But my 4gb scan disk camera card allows the use of Readyboost. Just wondering why it wont let me use the other harddrives.

 

[Muad Dib]

Simple answer is the other harddrives are not ReadyBoost devices.

Windows ReadyBoost flash devices include USB 2.0 flash drives, Secure Digital (SD) cards, or CompactFlash cards.

Not all of them are ReadyBoost capable though.

Edit: Welcome to SevenForums!

 

[Urbwolf]

I was able to use my 186 gb MTD external HD with windows vista x64 so i kinda figured it would still work on windows 7.

 

[Muad Dib]

I was able to use my 186 gb MTD external HD with windows vista x64 so i kinda figured it would still work on windows 7.

Hmmmm.... was a driver required?

 

[Urbwolf]

no driver needed, I was able to allocate 4gb of the drive space towards readyboost.
Here is a picture of someone using a mybook with readyboost. But it wont work for me.

 

[Muad Dib]

no driver needed, I was able to allocate 4gb of the drive space towards readyboost.

It maybe a problem with the version of Win7 you are running (7100) and is resolved in the RTM but technically it is not a flash device and may not be supported. As stated not all flash devices are ReadyBoost capable either.

The 1TB external HDD is not a ReadyBoost device.

 

[Muad Dib]

no driver needed, I was able to allocate 4gb of the drive space towards readyboost.
Here is a picture of someone using a mybook with readyboost. But it wont work for me.

Have you tried another ReadyBoost device with your configuration?

 

[Urbwolf]

Yes i actually hooked up camera/mp3 player that has a built in 20gb drive and it gave me the option to use some of the drive for it. I know there must be a way because it gave the option for the other person using windows 7 and his my book.

 

[tw33k]

Hello all,

Have a question regarding Readyboost. I have a my book essential 1TB and a 186 gb MTD external HD. Both say divice cannot be used for Readyboost. But my 4gb scan disk camera card allows the use of Readyboost. Just wondering why it wont let me use the other harddrives.

Not to sound like a jerk but why would you even NEED readyboost with 6gb of ram?

 

[Muad Dib]

Not to sound like a jerk but why would you even NEED readyboost with 6gb of ram?

And the second question is why would one want to use ReadyBoost on an external HDD of any kind. Sort of defeats the purpose. But I am interested as to why it is even possible.

 

[Muad Dib]

Hello all,

Have a question regarding Readyboost. I have a my book essential 1TB and a 186 gb MTD external HD. Both say divice cannot be used for Readyboost. But my 4gb scan disk camera card allows the use of Readyboost. Just wondering why it wont let me use the other harddrives.

Urbwolf here is some information as to the intended purpose of ReadyBoost:

Windows PC Accelerators: Performance Technology for Windows Vista

 

[harpua]

But a hard drive is a lot slower to access than ram, so why would someone want to use a hard drive? I don't think there is any performance advantage to be gained from that. In fact it should slow things down, imo.

 

[tw33k]

But a hard drive is a lot slower to access than ram, so why would someone want to use a hard drive? I don't think there is any performance advantage to be gained from that. In fact it should slow things down, imo.

It would slow things down. The whole point of readyboost is that it uses flash-based memory. External hard disks don't use flash-based memory. That's why they're not supported.

 

[Urbwolf]

believe it or not i actually got a performance increase when i ran some scans with readyboost. Things loaded fast for me also. How would it defeat the purpose of having a external HD using readyboost. it only uses 4gb of a drive. And why would someone do it with 6gb of ram. Easiest way to answer that is because I can (or could with vista)

 

[Antman]

believe it or not i actually got a performance increase when i ran some scans with readyboost...

Please provide analysis results.

 

[Urbwolf]

I can not provide results hence the believe it or not statement. As i said it worked with vista, I am now using windows 7 and its not working so i cannot supply new results. I was asking if anyone knew why I cant use readyboost not to start a flame why I would want to use readyboost.

 

[Urbwolf]

I have done more research regarding using a unsupported drive with windows 7. I dont understand why it worked for me in the past without the registry change but it did. I have tried this reg change and it has worked to enable readyboost on my external HD. "registry trick that has existed from the old Vista days. The HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\EMDMgmt, choose proper key*, change device status to 2 trick. (Otherwise known as the Force Readyboost on Unsupported Drives trick)"

 

[Antman]

I encourage the use of ReadyBoost in many situations. I am particularly interested in your drive configuration and application load during the period of "increased performance".

RB works a bit differently in Win7 than it does in Vista. It is reasonable that applications would load faster even when using the (much) less than optimal hack of HDD based RB that you describe. Other functionality derived from RB is actually hampered using your hack.

If you are going to use the hack moving forward, AND you do not have much I/O on the external drive, you should set the write cache to enabled and disable write-cache buffer flushing through Device Manager. This will allow you to use the drives onboard cache to a limited degree relative to capacity. It is not much, but it does maximize the efficacy of the hack.

 

[Muad Dib]

I have done more research regarding using a unsupported drive with windows 7. I dont understand why it worked for me in the past without the registry change but it did. I have tried this reg change and it has worked to enable readyboost on my external HD. "registry trick that has existed from the old Vista days. The HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\EMDMgmt, choose proper key*, change device status to 2 trick. (Otherwise known as the Force Readyboost on Unsupported Drives trick)"

Thanks for the tweak Urbwolf. I don't know that I would ever have a need to use it but it but one never knows....

 

[Kumar]

You can use any USB memory stick or SD card. I tried this method on Vista and Windows 7 and with memory stick and SD card. I didn't get the readyboost option at first but what I did is the following:
1. right click on the drive you want to use for readyboost from my computer and go to properties
2. check "compress drive to save disk space
3. format that drive as NTFS

after this you should have the option. If not choose for re-test or remove the drive and reconnect.
I never tried with an external HDD but who knows, it might work.