How Increase Your PC's Memory Using USB Flash Drive

Upgrading your computer’s RAM can be costly and time-consuming. Windows Vista introduced a useful new feature called ReadyBoost. ReadyBoost has the unique ability to transform ordinary flash based memory into newfound memory for your computer

ReadyBoost is a disk cache component of Microsoft Windows, first introduced with Microsoft's Windows Vista in 2006 and bundled with Windows 7 in 2009. It works by using flash memory, a USB flash drive, SD card, Compact Flash or any kind of portable flash mass storage system as a cache.

For a device to be compatible and useful it must conform to these requirements:

1.    You can enable or disable ReadyBoost for a specific flash drive or other removable storage device (ex: memory card).

2.    For ReadyBoost to effectively speed up your computer, the flash drive or memory card should have at least 1 GB of free available space.

3.    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)

4.    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.

5.    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.

6.    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.

Windows Vista and Windows 7 include a command-line utility called "winsat" to test the performance of random read and write speeds. The Command Prompt must be run with administrative privileges, otherwise test results will not be visible after testing.

To test random reads (4096 for 4 KB):

winsat disk -read -ran -ransize 4096 -drive driveletter

For random writes (524288 for 512 KB):

winsat disk -write -ran -ransize 524288 -drive driveletter

One may also run the test with the graphics user interface and examine the results in the Event Viewer

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.

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.

4. To Turn On ReadyBoost

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

·         Select Use this device to ReadyBoost.

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

·  Either slide the slider or enter the amount of free space you want to reserve to ReadyBoost

.

5. To Turn Off ReadyBoost

·         Select (dot) Do not use this device

.

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.