Readyboost gives you the equivalent of a hybrid hard drive, such as what Seagate is selling. It uses the flash memory for random, non-sequential reads, and the hard drive for sequential reads, and caches based on SuperFetch algorithm to determine what gets stored on the flash drive. It is disabled if you are running an SSD as it wouldn't benefit in that case.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff356869.aspx
The following bullet points are from the above article about Readyboost:
The flash drive needs to meet the following criteria to be of benefit:
- 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 in Windows 7.)
- 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
Readyboost provides the most noticeable impact on systems where:
- The computer has a slow hard disk drive. Computers with a primary hard disk Windows Experience Index (WEI) subscore lower than 4.0 will see the most significant improvements.
- The flash storage provides fast, random, non-sequential reads. Sequential read speed is less important.
- The flash storage is connected by a fast bus. Typically, USB memory card readers are not sufficiently fast. However, connecting flash memory to an internal memory card reader might provide sufficient performance.
Based on the way Readyboost works, there may be a time interval before you see any significant performance boost. File data has to be moved to the cache on the flash drive before it will be accessible from there. Give the system a few days, and if you don't feel you have gained anything, performance wise, you can always disable Readyboost and reclaim your space. It won't speed everything up, just random file access, and only if you used a fast flash drive in conjunction with a lower end hard drive.
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