Tech Break

Have a Windows Vista (or, for that matter, 7) computer? Is it running slower than it should be? Windows, starting with Vista, has a built-in feature to use flash drives to speed up your system. Its name: ReadyBoost.

To make it work, just plug in a rather large flash drive or put a memory card into your computer’s built-in reader if it has one (my computer has an SD card reader). When Windows asks you what to do with the new-foud drive, tell it to “Speed up my computer”. Let Windows pick the optimal size, or shrink the amount dedicated to ReadyBoost if you want to store files on your drive as well. Click OK and you’re in business.

The principle of ReadyBoost is thus: flash memory is better at accessing small bits of random information than hard drives, since there’s virtually no “seek time” involved in locating, and starting to read, a file. As such, Windows can use a flash drive to cache (store temporarily) various small files it might need for quickly opening and running programs, rather than having to go to the hard drive when files are needed. This, needless to say, speeds up things, especially if you are running Vista on, say, 1GB of RAM. Even my Windows 7-powered laptop, with 3GB of memory, got a bit peppier when I gave it another 3+ GB of SD card space to chew on.

Note that, while most modern flash drives work with ReadyBoost, some older, lower-end ones do not. Likewise, if you can see drive letters on a memory card reader with nothing inserted, that card reader may not work with ReadyBoost. So if you’re buying something for ReadyBoost purposes (4GB SD cards, or 4GB MicroSD cards with a USB adapter if you don’t have a built-in reader…Kingston makes some like that) keep in mind that, if you are getting a low-end drive, you may have to switch it for something else in order to get the cacheing magic; Windows won’t let RadyBoost slow itself down.

Have a tech question? Comment, and I’ll see how I can answer. I’ll be posting these quick tips as they come to me, or as I find answers to questions people ask. Hope this helps your tech!