4GB Flash-Drive=4GB RAM

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This is a really useful feature of Vista, that I though I'd share with the forums even though its pretty well known... sometimes things go un-noticed

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Step1
Insert your flash drive into a USB port. If you have auto play enabled, there should be an option in the menu that appears that says, "Speed Up My System" that will allow you to enable ReadyBoost and skip to the final step (step 6).

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Step 2

Open the My Computer tab.
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Step 3

Find the drive letter that your flash drive is occupying. Your computer will automatically assign the next available letter in the list when you plug it in. If you have one hard drive, and two disc drives, this means that your next drive letter is F. However, if you have multiple drives (hard drives, disk drives, removable disk drives, etc), or partitions, the letter will be further down the list.

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Step 4

Right click the drive letter, and choose properties.

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Step 5

Look for the ReadyBoost Tab, and select it.

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Step 6

Look for the option to enable the flash drive as RAM, and allocate the amount of space on the drive you wish to use as RAM. Remember, most systems (even newer ones) max out at 4GB RAM. So if you have a drive larger than that, or 2GB RAM already, you need to remember this limitation so as to prevent damage to your system.


This guide was copy+pasted from
How to Use a Flash Drive as RAM | eHow.com

I take no credit for this...
 
Not really equivalent to RAM though, plus you need a usb stick thats "ReadyBoost" Compatible. But as a quick fix I could see this working to some degree.
 
I ran a flash drive for ReadyBoost, for a while. It really didn't make any difference that I could tell. I no longer bother with Ready Boost, thou it may help with a slow, memory starved PC :D
 
Sadly it is also well documented that ReadyBoost isnt going to show any improvement on a system that has that much RAM. Plus to really get any bonus from ReadyBoost you should have a Flash Drive that is double the amount of RAM.

So if you have 4GB of RAM you should be using a Flash Drive that is 8GB in size. But even Microsoft has noted that if you have 2GB or more that ReadyBoost wont improve your system speed. ReadyBoost is mainly for systems that have 2GB of RAM or less.
 
Ready boost was a bad idea. It made sense considering that some people were trying to run the beast that is Vista on machines from 2002. But in reality it doesn't help you at all.

Ram can transmit ops in gigabytes per second, the best SSDs (which are much faster than a flash drive) are measured in megabytes per second. Flash memory is much slower, and only creates a memory bottleneck. It is about as flawed a system as pagefile.

The best solution is always to just get more ram.
 
I think ready boost was a good idea... the theory just didn't work out as well as microsoft would have liked...
 
I think ready boost was a good idea... the theory just didn't work out as well as microsoft would have liked...

Microsoft had no control over it. Storage medium will never be as fast as RAM. Therefore it makes a poor replacement. If anything it was a gimmick as the people at MS were smart enough to know that.
 
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