Readyboost to decrease boot time?

[ricno]

What is the opinion on Windows 7 readyboost? If using a fast USB memory, could it be used to decrease boot times for example?

Or is USB 2.0 not faster than modern hard drives to be of any use?

 

[The_Prophecy]

Readyboost can be used to decrease boot times, but it's really only useful if you have less than 2GB of ram installed in your system. More than that and it will produce no noticeable difference, and in some cases can actually slow down the boot time.

 

[ricno]

Readyboost can be used to decrease boot times, but it's really only useful if you have less than 2GB of ram installed in your system.

What is the relation to size of RAM? I thought this feature was to help disk IO by placing most common files on a device with better random IO read that hard drive, but I am not really sure of course.

I have lots of RAM (8 GB) and a fast drive (Samsung F3 1 TB), so would it be possible to have a faster USB device for the Readyboost and should it be of any value?

 

[number13]

Probably not, if you are running W7 (64bit with that much memory), it may well slow the system down, the only way that I know of to speed the boot up, is with a SSD, something about 150G to 200G, and install only windows on this drive and the really necessary boot programs, Antivirus, Net, Video and Sound (at boot Win reads all the files listed in the MBR, with 1 TB that can take a while) install all the other Apps on the Spinpoint, using a smaller drive for boot can speed the bootup considerably, I use a 250G for boot, 500G for apps and Games, 1TB and a 1.5TB for Archiving(ESATA) so I can turn them on and off

 

[jitpublisher]

Maybe you are confusing or thinking a USB device is somehow like an SSD in speed?
This is simply not the case, a USB device, like a thumb drive for instance, is terribly, terribly slow compared to RAM, or even a decent SATA hard drive.

 

[ricno]

(at boot Win reads all the files listed in the MBR, with 1 TB that can take a while)

Thanks for your reply, however the sentence above is not correct. There is no files listed in the MBR, it contains just some start code and the partition table. There is the file table in NTFS called $MFT that you might think of, but Windows does certainly not read all files at boot - that should be quite crazy.

Maybe you are confusing or thinking a USB device is somehow like an SSD in speed?
This is simply not the case, a USB device, like a thumb drive for instance, is terribly, terribly slow compared to RAM, or even a decent SATA hard drive.

No it is not that I confuse them, I think I know the pros and cons of SSD drives. I just read of the Readyboost feature which (if I understood it) should use ordinary USB drives and locate most used files on those, for the aim of improved boot times.

I guessed the point was that the USB could be faster than SATA for random access of small number of files, but if that is not the case then I will willingly accept it.