Fastest Readyboost..NTFS, FAT32, exFAT? THEY all work! But which is best

Please dont say get more more ram or readyboost is pointless. I want ram + readyboost. Plus I have tried it and it makes a difference on my machine.

I have an Secure digital flash card 8GB. Transfers over files to pc at about 17MB/sec. Qualifies for ready boost and i thought what they heck I'll use it.

Qeestion is what is the fastest file format for readyboost? I notice fat32 is only 4GB max but seems it have good perf. NTFS seems stupid for a storage card, or is it?

So wil exFAT provide the highest readyboost performance from this card?

BTW 64bit 7, using built in card reader.

 

exFat will be the fastest and best for readyboost.

 

Not sure why you said no "more RAM comments".

But up to 4GB you really should get more RAM - if you have 4GB already, Readyboost is definitely cheaper than a RAM upgrade, especially as you have a "flash card".
(4GB "sticks" are expensive)


On a side note - flash cards, and USB drives tend to perform worse in NTFS compared to FFAT32/exFAT.

 

Thanks for the replies guys

Well after some testining I can confirm exfat is fastest. Just use default allocation when you format.

DETlevcm, I said no ram comments becasue I am already aware that ram is faster than readyboost. This is in addition to it.

Win 7 i smart enough not to use the readboost if its its not beneficial to performance. I would recommend it to people if they have a spare quick sd cd or USB.

flash cards arent that expensive. Mine is an 8GB kingston. Got it overseas cbf doing the conversion but it was aboout $40US. About 17MB/sec read rate. I decided to whack it in because I lost my SD slot dummy card and wated to fill the slot when its not in use

mmmm slot filling

 

Well, Readyboost is really an extension of the pagefile and more meant for computers that can't have more RAM.
I actually set up readyboost with a USB flash drive (1GB Sony) on my old laptop that has 1GB of RAM and uses Win7 to run as a server - it worked without too.
Here RAM would be too costly if at all useful (its a 5 year old laptop) - but on a modern laptop...

That's why I said up to 4GB you should really consider a RAM upgrade - after that, potentially not as it becomes expensive.

 

I don't think anyone mentioned this yet but whatever file system you use format the drive to have the biggest file allocation unit size (cluster size). See the larger this block the more data you can read into ram in a single read instruction. It does also mean a bigger minimum file size (more wasted/slack space) but look at it this way, 8GB FAT32 with a 32KB allocation unit can hold a maximum of 262,144 files. I doubt most people have that many files to put onto an 8GB storage device. Even your OS should have larger than 4K allocation units because you will have a far higher throughput and more efficient reads. If your ReadyBoost device is being used exclusively for ReadyBoost try out exFAT with a 32MB allocation block. It means when your computer wants to write a file it will reserve 32MB and write to it and when it wants to read it will read 32MB of data into ram in a single read which will cut down thousands of otherwise unnecessary reads/delays.

The other thing to note is that ReadyBoost at minimum reads in 4K blocks and writes in 512KB blocks. If you're using allocation units very close to 512KB or more it will make ReadyBoost tons more efficient. ReadyBoost requires 2.5MB/s 4K random reads and 1.75MB/s 512KB random writes on the storage device.

I've personally tested load speeds booting Vista/Win7 installs off a usb flash drive. FAT32 with 32KB allocation block loaded to the setup screen 5 seconds faster than FAT32 with 4KB allocation block on an 8GB Corsair Flash Voyager.

http://www.activewin.com/reviews/hardware/memory/vista/readyboost.shtml
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/236417-44-readyboost-card
http://www.techcrater.com/2007/04/05/readyboost-flash-memory-speed-list/
http://www.techcrater.com/2007/04/06/how-to-find-readyboost-speed-rating/
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc742157(WS.10).aspx

 

WHat do you mean 8gb with fat32. Doesnt it have a 4GB limit...


Thanks for the links. They are helpfull

Atm Im using 8gb exFAT parition with 32kb allocation.

Heres mine

The device (Unknown Unknown) is suitable for a ReadyBoost cache. The random read speed is 5878 KB/sec. The random write speed is 5370 KB/sec.

Rather slow :S

 

pampum the 4GB limit only applies to a single file size not the drive size, you can have up to 1TB (and I think 2TB if you use a 64KB allocation unit size) single drive size with FAT32 or maybe it's FAT32X. Limitations are listed on wikipedia.

8GB FAT32 drive using 64KB allocation unit size can have a maximum (every file no larger than 64KB) 8,589,934,592Bytes/65,536Bytes per file = 131,072 files maximum that FAT32 can count. Most people using an 8GB flash drive/mem card won't be putting that many files onto the drive so it's a great size if all your devices can read such large blocks. My Canon A590IS digi cam can read/write to that size allocation block and since most pictures I take on that cam are 500KB jpegs there's no wasted space with more efficient read/write performance.

BTW pampum those speeds seem pretty good to me. At 32KB allocation you should use FAT32 as it's way more compatible with everything from stand alone devices to other OSes like Linux & Mac. I recommend you try using a much larger exFAT as partition 2 for your ReadyBoost. Try 1MB allocation size and move your way up to 4MB, 16MB, 32MB. Repartition that 8GB to 4096MB + 10% extra space exFAT for the ReadyBoost. Keep the left over as FAT32 32KB allocation in the first partition (useful for booting) if your device is only an 8GB. If you can allocate more than 8GB into an exFAT partition then consider using the same partition for both ReadyBoost and Pagefile with a 32MB allocation unit.

 

Ghetto child.\

-Doesnt readyboost only use a single file anyway....? I know 4gb is file size limit in fat32, but thats what readboost uses no? One at a time. I dont think it will work efficiently splitting it up?

Everything else you mention it seems you are assuming I am using the flash card for other purposes as well. I am dedicating this flash card to readyboost, nothing else, no cameras or anything. So fat32 compatabilty is of no concern. I simply want the fatest way to speed up the system using teh single SD card.

However using the SD card as a a paging file is interesting. Isnt this what readyboost does anyway? Its another paging file. No need to add a sytem paging file as well as readyboost on the same card? Seems counter prouctive.

 

so what is the best readyboost setting, exFat 32k or fat32. I have an acer revo with 3gb of ram win 7 32bit and a 4GB SD card just for readyboost. I really don't think readyboost makes a difference with my amount of ram at least.

 

Getting into thread

What´s the best or fastest 4Gb or 8gb SDHC to use with a cardreader, to activate ReadBoost at Windows Seven?
I´ve seen brands like A-Data, PQi, Transcend at eBay, but I don´t know what´s the best.

And as I want something cheap, I´m not gonna buy Sandisk III.

 

Sandisk has a class 10 It states speeds up to 30mbps. I do not know how fast the card reader works or if readyboost limits any.

 

In Vista ReadyBoost uses a single file but in Win7 you can RAID external devices and have ReadyBoost spread across several usb/mem card devices and I believe you can have 8GB for ReadyBoost in Win7.

Putting the pagefile on a usb flash/mem card instead of the hard drive is alot like ReadyBoost except pagefile is RAM cacheing and ReadyBoost is more HDD caching. ReadyBoost does cache some pagefile but only because it's caching HDD read/writes while pagefile caches any data that is not needed in ram due to old/lack of space but still needing to be kept. Very good question if putting both pagefile and readyboost on the same external storage can still get some benefit. I can't predict which would be better if any. Having ReadyBoost on a different external device to the pagefile say pagefile on usb 1 and RB on usb 2 should give benefits to greater bandwidth and simultaneous transfers. All I can picture is RB comes between RAM and PageFile/drive transfers.

The only issue with having the pagefile on an external device is if the device hiccups and the OS loses sight of the external storage then you'll get data corruption from the pagefile being lost. Still a lot the same as ReadyBoost being lost from a hiccup too.

I have not tested exFAT 32KB vs FAT32 32KB what I was pointing out is exFAT lets you go as high as 32MB allocation units so exFAT should be a lot faster since you can chose allocation sizes really large and dedicate that drive to just ReadyBoost/Pagefile and have really fast reads due to the large blocks. Imagine reading your pagefile in 1MB chunks? vs 4MB vs 16MB vs 32MB chunks compared to the usual tiny 4KB NTFS/FAT32 pieces? Performance would be really high with the larger pieces. Notice mattisdata's post http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/20...ering-the-windows-7-improvements.aspx#9390673

icefly & reb1 the first class 10 SD card I ever discovered were the Panasonic brand back at christmas time. I bought A-Data class 10 8GB SDHC for $27CAD in March and there are 8GB-16GB microSDHC class 10 kingston cards for like $50-$100CAD. I buy most things from www.ncix.com and their usa site is www.ncixus.com . Class 10 means a minimum high-speed of 10MB/s sustained constant guaranteed. That's if your device is fast enough to keep up with the memory card. You can easily get faster performance if your device can transfer faster. If you really want fastest I think you need to look at CF CompactFlash cards. They have speeds of 533X on the consumer market right now and support UDMA4. The "X" speeds means how many times the single speed CD-ROM data rate or 1X=176KB/s.

 

I have the same question. I am new to Windows 7 and Readyboost. I have a new notebook with 4GB RAM and Readyboost is NOT set up. With the amount of RAM I have, is Readyboost even worth setting up? In other words, will it result in marked performance imrovement? If so, what type of card and what size would you recommend setting it up for?

 

No gain for you there.

 

If I had windows 7 on my comp I would give ready boost a go. I heard on Vista it was a flop. Being able to use up to 256gig over 8 devises is allot of storage for info to boost speed.
I have an XP box and tried out the eboostr program in November. I have a 5300 Toshiba hdd in my Vaio. I have 4gig of ram and am using 4gig of sd for the program. In addition to 4gig of sd I set up the program to use 2.5gig of hidden system memory. This gives me 6.5gig the program uses to store program info and it brings up programs and web pages much quicker than without it. In my case the hard drive is the bottleneck.

 

Thanks for the info. I think I will gather up any cards I have lying around and give it a try.. When you mention "the program" what are you referring to?

 

I think its this:
http://www.eboostr.com

 

Try out the eboostr4 beta. It's awesome.
Use the ram cache and prioritize these
-explorer.exe
-your web browser
-touchpad driver
-any program that access the hdd a lot (check perfmon)

It makes my netbook feel more than 500% faster.

 

found something interesting thanks to this post

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management the 2 keys " ExistingPageFiles" and " PagingFiles" might be a way to place the pagefile and hibernate file inside a folder on a different partition? If so you can have a dedicated partition for all your multboot OSes and stick each OS pagefile & hibernate file in its own dedicated folder and make that dedicated partition a 32MB allocation unit size exFAT partition.

 

just remember your ReadyBoost performance is determed by the device's 512KB random write speed and 4KB random read speed. If you do a manual "WINSAT DISK" test from command prompt you want to use 4096 bytes for random reading and 524288 bytes for random write

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