use SD card in ReadyBoost

Hello,
Is it possible to use SD card in ReadyBoost to extend my RAM? I have HP pavilion dv9700 series (dv9750ej), and I'm considering if I should do that, or through USB pen drive (the last option would be to actually install another memory).

How fast is it compared to a real RAM memory? (the card I have is a simple SanDisk 2GB SD). USB pen drive would be better?

Thanks!

 

I'm doing that right now with my HP computer. Readyboost doesn't actually extend the ram. Windows uses it as a cache for random disk read and writes. Flash memory is faster than hard drives with random reads and write.

But, if you have less than 2gb ram, no upgrade will be better than upgrading to 3gb though.

 

readyboost is useless if u have 1+gb of ram... just upgrade your ram as Savior suggested,
also SD cards have not been specifically designed for readyboost/speed in mind... i believe they max. out atm at about 150x... with the current speed of HDs rising, there will be no perceptible improvements using readyboost... hds can reach 70mb/s where as a 150x sd card reaches 22.5 mb/s.... having a 0ms access time is no substitute for good bandwidth IMO forget readyboost><

 

Buy RAM its cheap.

 

I use an 8GB SD card for readyboost as it fits in the slot on my laptop and does not hang outside like a USB pen would (I also though, why not as the slot is there and I had a spare card). 4GB readyboost and 4GB of the drivers / important files if I ever reload the laptop.

Readyboost does not replace RAM. Nothing will get over a shortage of RAM except adding more of the stuff.

What ReadyBoost does is to cache small files that are getting written to the HDD to allow them to be quickly read back if they are needed, the files are still written to the drive but a copy is kept on the flash memory. Things that use it alot are Web Browsers etc where they have the small files for their page caches.

ReadyBoost does make a difference no matter how much RAM you have as it is an extra cache for the HDD, its just that with more RAM you have more of these small files stored in RAM anyway. If you read and write lots of small files all over the disc, readyboost will speed up reading of these files at a later date.

The stats for my laptop last night showed that I wrote 6GB to the flash card (some was written and the discarded) and read back over 80GB from it and all I was doing is browsing the web and some business work, I have 4GB of ram already.

The myths about readyboost are that

1) The flash module just has the swap file on it - Wrong. The swap file is still on your HDD.
2) It appears as extra ram - wrong. It will not help if you are running out of ram.
3) It speeds up the computer - wrong. It cannot speed up the physical processor, if you are number crunching and the PC is slowed down by a slow CPU it will not help at all.
4) Its useless because HDD's are far faster at data transfer - Wrong. HDD's are very fast at large blocks of data transfer (80-90MB/s currently writing out data in one long file) but as soon as you get small blocks (4-8K) of data spread all over the disc its like running through treacle compared to flash ram. This is the type of data that readyboost speeds up quite significantly because there is no time needed to position the head on flash ram and reading small fragmented data is what flash ram does best.

For about £10 you can get some very fast SD cards, dont go any slower than a class 6 and you should be fine. My class 6 can read 4K blocks at 7MB/s and write 4K blocks at 5MB/s, well above that needed by readyboost (My HDD came out at less than 1MB/s, sometimes in the very low KB/s), using larger data blocks has netted a write speed of 30MB/s+ so far in testing which is not far off my HDD speed of 48MB/s when copying the same file between drives (slow drives in the G71V as standard).

 

A SD card is real slow for random writes...

 

Mine seem to be fine, faster than any of my current USB pen drives I own. Currently I have a slightly slower 16GB modual in the slot but this is the ReadyBoost test results.

EventData

DeviceName Unknown Unknown
FreeSpace 4192256
ReadRate 5738
WriteRate 3900

 

run passmark from:
http://www.passmark.com/products/pt.htm
before and after using a readyboost.. then post back your results. Not many people are going to believe readyboost makes a serious difference without benchmarks to confirm it.