eboostr experience - not good so far

I decided to try out the eboostr 3.0 beta to see if it can speed up my mom's computer (an ancient eMachine T1221 with a Celeron 1.3 Ghz). Normally, adding more memory is best, but the machine is maxed out at 512Mb. I figured that adding a disk cache to an usb stick may be able to add additional performance. Apparently, I was wrong.

The machine is setup to use a 2Gb stick of Cruzer Micro (readyboost ready). HDtach returned about 27 Mb/s read speed with an access time of 0.6ms. The machine has an USB 2.0 card, so it should be fast enough.

I ran several test like startup, shutdown, opening different applications, opening web pages. All of the test were no faster than before eboostr. I examined the cache and noted that the files being opened are in the cache, it's just that they didn't return quickly enough. If it worked, it should be noticeable.

I decided to do some investigating and ran the eboostr speed test. It came back with a ratio of only speed ratio of 1.13 and 100% cache hit. A 13% speed bump is probably too slow to make a difference and this is with a reasonably fast stick. I installed eboostr and used memory as a cache, but the ratio only went up to 1.59. This is a lot better, but surprisingly low for a memory cache. Keep in mind that while it's faster to find a file on the USB drive, the cpu cost for getting it is higher. HDtach indicated that it only use 5% CPU to read from the IDE drive and 19% CPU to read from the USB drive.

With numbers like these, I wonder how other people are getting better results.

Thanks.

Paul

 

eboostr just like readyboost is a failed technology. forget it and save your money and your usb sticks

 

I agree that it is a snake oil technology. Good in theory but not practical. Memory is cheap these days if you have a recent computer.