Vista Speed Boost!!!

Soldato
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8 Jun 2006
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Anyone tried this out yet???

Tell Vista to use the USB stick instead of RAM/page file and it speeds loading times up and remembers what you usually use for next time!!!

I may buy a 2gb fast USB stick and see......
 
Why would anyone want to use a flash memory stick instead of the ram? Ram is a hell of a lot faster than flash memory and doesn't have a limited amount of read and write cycles.
 
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wish I could find the link apps access double windows starts up almost instantly all with this new type of hybrid hardisk that windows makes full use of...cant remember where its posted though
 
dafloppyone said:
wish I could find the link apps access double windows starts up almost instantly all with this new type of hybrid hardisk that windows makes full use of...cant remember where its posted though

Gigabyte i-ram uses ram as a substitue for a hdd so everything loads instantly.
 
dafloppyone said:
wish I could find the link apps access double windows starts up almost instantly all with this new type of hybrid hardisk that windows makes full use of...cant remember where its posted though

yeah. that was basically a raid array of flash memory type-arrangement. That did load windows quicker, if benchmarks are to be believed. It was also limited to 33mb/sec again, if those same benchmarks are to be believed. not much good when hard drives are doing 70mb/sec now. and it wasnt cheap, either.
 
Energize said:
Why would anyone want to use a flash memory stick instead of the ram? Ram is a hell of a lot faster than flash memory and doesn't have a limited amount of read and write cycles.

Cause its not replacing the ram, its replacing/supplementing the hard drive. So it is faster than a HD.
 
modo77 said:
Cause its not replacing the ram, its replacing/supplementing the hard drive. So it is faster than a HD.

It's designed for cache, which is what the ram does. If you tried to load programs off a usb memory stick it would take an age. Practical solution if the pc is paging; get more ram.
 
modo77 said:
Cause its not replacing the ram, its replacing/supplementing the hard drive. So it is faster than a HD.


modo77, flash ram is pathetically slow. However it does have very low latency compared to hard drives, which is why it would be useful for caching, but only for chaching small amounts of data im sure. but dont think its faster than a harddrive. for most things, its no where near.
 
I just tried it with my 2GB memory stick in and it does improve bootup a lot. I can see the memory stick been accessed just after the post screen.
 
That's because when you shut down Vista ensures the flash stick has got the essential boot up files, like all your drivers etc, stored on the flash stick. Flash is many many times faster than a HD for random access. During normal Windows use, the flash drive simply serves as a super fast page file. Very useful for PC's with not much RAM but perhaps less so for others.
 
hmm, aren't flash sticks only good for a couple of thousand read/writes - this sort of use will surely prematurely kill it.

fini
 
fini said:
hmm, aren't flash sticks only good for a couple of thousand read/writes - this sort of use will surely prematurely kill it.

fini

Yeah they have a limited number of cycles which can't be avoided. Personally I'd just stick to ram. ;)
 
MS are recommending a Samsung stick that isn't out just yet I read somewhere?

Gonna keep my eye on it all the same :)
 
The MTBF (mean time before failure) rating of flash sticks is mainly there to cover the manufacturer legally. I read a blog posting a while back from the team at Redmond who wrote SuperFetch and their testing revealed no issues with flash sticks suddenly dying.
 
Energize said:
Somehow I can't imagine them putting a mtbf rating on the product if they never failed.
All computer products have MTBFs... TFTs, CRTs, HDDs......

Flash sticks have been common place for what, 3-5 years now? In that time I can honestly say I've never heard anyone say "Oh my flash stick just died :(" ;)
 
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