The second thing you can do to improve the performance of Windows Vista is to take advantage of ReadyBoost.
ReadyBoost is a new technology with Vista. What it does is to use storage from a USB thumb drive or other storage devices as a cache for your PC. It works because the access time for flash memory is far faster than disk storage. Therefore, the computer’s operations see a significant improvement when you use ReadyBoost.
Yeah, that’s all technical nonsense. I recognize you’re merely after speed. That’s cool.
To use ReadyBoost you need a USB thumb drive. The documentation claims that all you need is a USB storage device. Technically, that’s true. But I’ve tried using ReadyBoost with a media card or external hard drive, and every time Windows comes back and says that the gizmo is too slow. Therefore you must needs a USB thumb drive.
Use a thumb drive that has at least as much storage as your computer’s memory. My machine has 3GB of RAM, so I bought a 4GB thumb drive. (It was about $50 at Office Max.) The minimum size drive you can use is 256MB.
Plug the thumb drive into your PC. From the AutoPlay dialog box that appears, choose the option titled Speed Up My System. Doing so takes you to the thumb drive’s Properties dialog box, ReadyBoost tab. Choose the option Use This Device, and instantly you should see a performance improvement.
As with other USB storage gizmos, don’t just yank the thumb drive from the PC when you want to; you must “safely remove” the thing. Directions are found in my books.
Enjoy the speed!
With regards your Safely remove remark, I’ve found that Vista gets particularly snarky when you pull a USB device without asking it for clearance. I got used to not using the magical removey icon in XP, and every time I do it under Vista, and plug in the device again, it wants to check for erros (which it never finds). Annoying, yes. You know why Vista does this, Dan? Or are you as clueless as me to this?
Comment by Douglas — July 31, 2008 @ 5:32 am
I suppose I was born with the recognition that you must properly dismount a storage device, so it’s not an issue for me. In fact, I was uncomfortable yanking out floppy disks (in that era). I really wanted a unmount command. I suppose that’s one reason Unix immediately appealed to me because of its unmount command (though in my head I use “dismount”).
Vista doesn’t like getting rid of its storage devices and it’s required to check for errors because of the way the OS is set up; file fragments will be found on any improperly-removed media. Enough of those fragments will cripple the media. In fact, I have a digital voice recorder that’s near useless because it keeps crashing. The solution is to improperly dismount it, but that results in less recording time due to the file fragments.
I hope this sort of addresses your issue. If not, then I am truly clueless. :\
Comment by admin — July 31, 2008 @ 7:53 am