[Henishi]

every time i put a usb drive it says about speeding up my system i never tried it thou .. some one told me that this is like putting more ram in your computer and it will run faster.... is this true ????

[Locke]

I believe it is. Depending on how much space is on the USB Drive, it'll speed it up.

I use a little 1 GB stick for Windows ReadyBoost (that's the program's name), and it seems to speed it up a little.

This post has been edited by Locke37: 05 November 2008 - 09:11 AM

[PsychoCoder]

The drive also has to have a minimum read speed for it to be able to use for ReadyBoost. The drive/USB stick must be able to do 3.5 MB/s for 4 KB random reads uniformly across the entire device and 2.5 MB/s for 512 KB random writes

[Henishi]

so if i have a 500GB usb drive and use it it will Run REALLY Fast RighT?? any can tell me how this work inside ( what is the computer doin )the computer

[GWatt]

It's using the free space on your flash drive as virtual memory. Virtual memory is absolutely no substitute for more RAM because RAM can be accessed much faster than hard drives. However, there is nothing wrong with adding memory, even virtual, to your computer.

[Henishi]

GWatt, on 5 Nov, 2008 - 02:50 PM, said:

It's using the free space on your flash drive as virtual memory. Virtual memory is absolutely no substitute for more RAM because RAM can be accessed much faster than hard drives. However, there is nothing wrong with adding memory, even virtual, to your computer.

i got a bit lost ok so virtual memory is what make run faster the computer???


ram then is ????


sorry for this noob questions




also is the ready boost has like alimit of how much we can add??

[GWatt]

For this explanation:
Main Memory is where all of the programs' temporary values exist. When your web browser loads this page, the HTML code is stored in memory somewhere as 0s & 1s. Main memory consists of RAM and virtual memory. Accessing RAM is much, much faster than accessing virtual memory because bus speeds (how fast info can get from on place to another) are greater. In this case, information is going from some storage device to the processor cache.
Virtual memory is stored someplace on a hard-drive or some other more permanent (than RAM) storage device. If the virtual memory is on your hard drive then whenever your computer needs access to that memory it has to find it on the disk and and read the information from the disk to the processor cache. Finding the information on a hard-drive takes longer than finding it in RAM because the hard-drive has to spin. If you're using a flash drive it doesn't have to spin, but the bus speeds are waaaaaaaaaay slower than reading from a hard-drive.

Virtual memory is still pretty useful. Open applications that aren't doing anything still take RAM and by intelligently shuffling which applications are in RAM and which ones are in virtual memory the OS can pretend to increase the amount of RAM available. Also, when your computer goes into hibernation/suspend mode the settings are stored into virtual memory because RAM will lose information unless it has power. disk drives/flash drives won't.

[Henishi]

GWatt, on 5 Nov, 2008 - 09:52 PM, said:

For this explanation:
Main Memory is where all of the programs' temporary values exist. When your web browser loads this page, the HTML code is stored in memory somewhere as 0s & 1s. Main memory consists of RAM and virtual memory. Accessing RAM is much, much faster than accessing virtual memory because bus speeds (how fast info can get from on place to another) are greater. In this case, information is going from some storage device to the processor cache.
Virtual memory is stored someplace on a hard-drive or some other more permanent (than RAM) storage device. If the virtual memory is on your hard drive then whenever your computer needs access to that memory it has to find it on the disk and and read the information from the disk to the processor cache. Finding the information on a hard-drive takes longer than finding it in RAM because the hard-drive has to spin. If you're using a flash drive it doesn't have to spin, but the bus speeds are waaaaaaaaaay slower than reading from a hard-drive.

Virtual memory is still pretty useful. Open applications that aren't doing anything still take RAM and by intelligently shuffling which applications are in RAM and which ones are in virtual memory the OS can pretend to increase the amount of RAM available. Also, when your computer goes into hibernation/suspend mode the settings are stored into virtual memory because RAM will lose information unless it has power. disk drives/flash drives won't.

Thank you very much for his precious info

[ferrari12508]

Also, on the 500GB hard drive thing, A flash drive would be a better choice as it can be much faster, it has no moving parts unlike a hard drive which needs to spin the platter inside and move the "arm" inside of it to read and write information. Also, I think the max ReadyBoost was somewhere around 4GBs, It could be more, but I remember reading that there was a max and after you pass that maximum, it is actually suppose to slow down the extra you added.

[ludjer]

unless we get ourselves some ssd's then we are talking about speed .

personaly i have never noticed the speed increase when using a flashdisk on my pc :\
cause i already have 4 gigs of ddr800 ram and had 8 gigs when i was running vista, too bad XP can only support 3.24 gigs of ram, 0.76 gigs going to waste currently

[Locke]

ludjer, on 7 Nov, 2008 - 04:51 AM, said:

unless we get ourselves some ssd's then we are talking about speed .

personaly i have never noticed the speed increase when using a flashdisk on my pc :\
...8 gigs when i was running vista...

That's why...if you have 8 gigs...I don't see very much of a point.

[PsychoCoder]

ludjer, on 7 Nov, 2008 - 03:51 AM, said:

too bad XP can only support 3.24 gigs of ram, 0.76 gigs going to waste currently

Get the 64 bit version (such as I have) and you can utilize all 8 GB

[ferrari12508]

I just switched a few days ago to a 64-bit version, and if anyone tells you you need 32-bit to run something, make fun of them and tell them to get a virtual machine. I just set up a virtual machine today because I spent $6 on a PS2 eye toy for a web cam and it only has 32-bit drivers. Yes, I set up a whole virtual machine for a web cam. Also, you say Vista supported 8GBs but XP didnt. I could say the same thing the toher way around and make it completely true. XP supports 16EBs if you could find a system with that much, you just need the correct version.

[PsychoCoder]

64 bit XP and Vista support more than 4 GB, 32 bit Windows OS's don't