Quick Readyboost question...

Mikoyan · 18 Sep 2007 at 22:00

Shall I format my 2gb usb stick to NTFS or keep it to FAT...? :confused:

Ta

Theguy · 19 Sep 2007 at 01:05

personaly I would keep it to FAT, just so if you do transport your flash drive around the place, you know that all computers will be able to read it.

theres no difference that I know in proformance between FAT and NTFS in readyboost.

Greenlizard0 · 19 Sep 2007 at 01:17

Hmm...I have a spare 2GB and 4GB drive hanging around. I might convert one to a readyboost at some point. My laptop with Vista only has a 1GB of RAM.

Let us know how it goes I'm interested

Mikoyan · 19 Sep 2007 at 08:43

From most of the websites I have browsed regarding this question it seems everyone just keeps it to FAT as they say its faster than NTFS. :confused:

stoofa · 19 Sep 2007 at 12:14

Readyboost works best when you match the amount of physical RAM.
So if you have 2GB you will want a 2GB flash drive.
Also when it comes to drives of that size FAT32 in theory can be the quicker file format.
Even in the days of NT4 Microsoft recommended NTFS only on HD's 8GB+ in size.
Also remember the maximum size for Readyboost is 4GB.
Finally, if you plug in your device and it comes back and says it isn't compatible with Readyboost (device is tested, if it doesn't meet certain speed requirements it tells you) please don't use any of the "hacks" to force it as you can actually reduce your system performance that way.

Phil2008 · 20 Sep 2007 at 15:15

I guess readyboot, dosent work if you have superfetch disabled??????

Elevon · 20 Sep 2007 at 17:33

Mikoyan said:
From most of the websites I have browsed regarding this question it seems everyone just keeps it to FAT as they say its faster than NTFS.

I have read different,infact some USB drives that fail ReadyBoost in FAT32 seem to pass in NTFS format,personally I have tried both and prefer NTFS.

3. Conclusions
FAT highs:

* The effective work requires few of RAM.
* Fast work with small and average directories.
* The disc implements less movements of the heads (as compared with NTFS).
* The effective work on slow discs.

FAT lows:

* Quick performance decrease with the fragmentation going up (only for FAT32).
* Difficulty in access to big files (more than 10% of the disc space).
* Very slow work with directories containing huge amount of files.

NTFS highs:

* Fragmentation does not influence the system performance (the work might became worse as far as data access is concerned).
* Complicity of the structure of directories and the number of files do not affect the performance.
* Quick access to the required file fragment (i.e. editing of big .wav files).
* Very quick access to small files (several hundreds bytes) - the whole file is located in the same place as the system data (MFT recording).

NTFS lows:

* The memory size mustn't be less than 64 MBytes.
* Slow discs and controllers without Bus Mastering slows the system performance down tremendously.
* The work with average-size directories is quite difficult, since they are fragmented.
* The disc working for a long time with 80% - 90% of its space occupied shows low performance.

Remember, that the RAM size is the chief factor influencing the system performance. In case of 64-96 MBytes both NTFS and FAT are equal. If you are using only an OS and simplest applications, FAT32 might turn to be better on the PCs with bigger size of memory.

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/index3.html

I ditched FAT32 back in my XP days,oh and I leave my ReadyBoost device in my Vista all the time,got plenty of other USB drives that I can use for portable storage.