{"id":1403,"date":"2007-02-04T22:20:46","date_gmt":"2007-02-05T02:20:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2007\/02\/04\/readyboost\/"},"modified":"2007-02-04T22:20:46","modified_gmt":"2007-02-05T02:20:46","slug":"readyboost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2007\/02\/04\/readyboost\/","title":{"rendered":"ReadyBoost"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nI don\u2019t really follow the Windows world, but I happened to read Peter Lewis\u2019s article<\/a> in the print edition of Fortune<\/em>, where he mentions a new feature of Windows Vista called ReadyBoost. If your PC doesn\u2019t have very much RAM, plug in a USB flash drive, and your PC gets faster. That sounded odd, since flash memory\u2014whether in an iPod, a camera, or a USB key\u2014has always seemed slow to me. After reading more about ReadyBoost<\/a>, it turns out that flash memory is<\/em> slow at sustained transfers, but that its access time<\/em> is about ten times that of a hard disk. After all, there\u2019s no platter to rotate and no head to be out of position. Even an iPod shuffle is faster than a hard disk for random 4K reads.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n

\r\nVista uses the flash memory as a cache for parts of the virtual memory swap file, and this is apparently a big win for small page-ins. It routes bulk page-ins to the hard disk, even if the pages are on the flash, because with large transfers the disk will be faster. Flash drives wear out after a comparatively small number of writes, so apparently there\u2019s also some kind of lazy writeback from the hard disk to the flash, reducing the number of writes so that the flash\u2019s life will be extended to 10 years. All in all, I think this is pretty clever. The funny part is that Windows uses different drivers to connect to Plays For Sure devices, so they can\u2019t be used with ReadyBoost. If you want to use your MP3 player to speed up your PC, get an iPod.\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t really follow the Windows world, but I happened to read Peter Lewis\u2019s article in the print edition of Fortune, where he mentions a new feature of Windows Vista called ReadyBoost. If your PC doesn\u2019t have very much RAM, plug in a USB flash drive, and your PC gets faster. That sounded odd, since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}