(Not) Extending Vista Memory with a USB Device
Vista can utilize a USB flash memory device in two ways. In addition to the traditional mode of mounting it as a removable disk drive, Vista has a mode to treat it as additional core memory. However, people have been reporting that this mode doesn’t work with all USB flash memory devices. The Microsoft rumor mill is reporting that this is deliberate. Not all USB flash drives are manufactured the same. The reason that they can be had so cheap lately is that they are often loaded with a combination of fast and slow memory. For example, a 2 GB drive might contain 256 MB of fast memory up front, with the remaining memory being quite slow — slower than a hard drive, in fact. Vista requires that (a) all of the memory be consistent, and (b) all of the memory be faster than a disk drive (otherwise it may as well just continue paging to disk).
I’m not sure why anyone he would want to do this anyway, because flash memory wears out after a finite number of writes, but I suppose if you are desperate for core memory, then this is good in a pinch. For those who need it, Microsoft is apparently working on a certification program for USB flash memory devices.
Read more: Windows
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Welcome craig. Nice to see a post on this again
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I think you’re referring to the ReadyBoost feature. This is does not extend core memory if I understand correctly.
Rather, it acts as a “write-through cache” for hard drive access. Whenever the system writes to a disk, it simultaneously writes to the cache. Later, when/if the system needs to read that same section from the disk later on, the system reads from the cache.
If you have a good usb drive, the effect can be dramatic. Most hard drives have a 8MB or 16MB cache, but your average usb drive holds at least a gig.
You’re right about the limited-write thing, though. I’m guessing that ReadyBoost will go through usb drives as if they were AA batteries.
288314 Blog Verification on 13 Mar 2007 at 3:19 am
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» Problemas con ReadyBoost Win-Vista.es | Blog de Windows Vista on 20 Mar 2007 at 6:14 pm
[…] En CodeJacked hacen una breve reseña sobre el ReadyBoost, y problemas con dispositivos USB. Para aquellos que no estén al tanto de esta funcionalidad exclusiva del Windows Vista, en este artículo hablamos al respecto. […]