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Make USB Drive Work As RAM

Windows Vista is a resource hungry operating system developed by Microsoft. In my honest opinion, if you don't have minimum of 1 GB RAM, don't go for it. But applying my simple hack, you can use any Flash drive, SD Cards, CF Cards as the memory option for the computer.

Till now, Microsoft’s windows had Page File options for the memory requirement of the computer, so that the computing can be done at cheaper rates and that too without installing the physical memory i.e RAM.

However, with the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft has introduced a new technology called ReadyBoost. ReadyBoost is a disk caching technology first included with Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system. It aims to make computers running Windows Vista more responsive by using flash memory on a USB 2.0 drive, SD card, Compact Flash, or other form of flash memory, in order to boost system performance. This feature can be used to use secondary storage devices such as cards to be used a memory option.

There are many benefits of using Flash Drives or Cards -

1) Faster than access time of virtual memory in harddisk.
2) Cheaper than physical RAM.

Steps to activate this feature on you system -

1) Open My Computer.
2) Right Click on the Removable Disk Drive and select Properties.
3) Click on ReadyBoost Tab option.
4) Enable the feature by selecting the option and allocate the amount of space you want to use as memory.



But things to be noted before using this feature -

1) Vista requires atleast 512 MB RAM as minimum requirement. Though it runs decent 1 GB, you require this amount of memory.
2) There is a minimum data transfer rate required to activate this feature. If your device is not giving the option of ReadyBoost then it means that it doesn’t clear up the minimum data transfer rate required by ReadyBoost technology.

I think this post will prove beneficial for all the Vista users.

Update : Some blog readers are reporting that ReadyBoost Tab is not visible in their system. Make sure the service "Readyboost" is turned on in services.msc. Also check the service
properties\dependancies and make sure everything it needs is also on.


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Comments (6)

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Nice post...thanks for your info...but i think the performance would not as good as using ram..
Yeah anuj the way of your writing is quite handsome.Keeps your eyes on the latest trends and always try to be the first to post it.
Keeps on walking by your chocolaty works
:)
1 reply · active 873 weeks ago
Thanks Sir, I will abide by the rules of blogging and always try to catch up the latest technology.
Hi Anuj ! PenDrives have a limited-read write life ! And , hence using them as RAM will cost their life . Even , the flash drives with "ReadyBoostReady" tag will also suffer .

Moreover , if you plug a 2GB flash drive it will never mean that u r going to have a 2GB RAM !! its always lesser !
1 reply · active 873 weeks ago
Well, of course USB drives cannot be used as replacement for RAM, as I already stated the reason above, but still it can be used to some extent for caching. And also, its now available for Windows XP also.

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