Introduction

ReadyBoost is a new feature that was introduced with Windows Vista. ReadyBoost takes advantage of the fast seek time of USB 2.0 flash drives, SD cards, and CompactFlash cards and puts that speed to use by caching data for quick retrieval.

Here’s an example of how ReadyBoost works:

Let’s say you use Windows Mail every morning during the work week at 8am to check your email. ReadyBoost will learn your patterns and load anticipated software or data in its cache. When you access anticipated data or software ReadyBoost loads it from the ReadyBoost enabled drive instead of the slower hard drive. Since the ReadyBoost enabled drive is much faster than today’s hard drives software and data accessed using ReadyBoost loads much faster.

How-to Use ReadyBoost

1. Insert a ReadyBoost compatible drive.
2. After you insert a ReadyBoost compatible drive an AutoPlay window will pop up asking you what you want to do with the drive if you haven’t activated ReadyBoost on it yet.

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   Select ReadyBoost.

3. Select how much space you want to allocate for ReadyBoost and click OK. You need at least 256MB for ReadyBoost and once you reserve space you can’t use it as long as ReadyBoost is being used on the drive.

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That’s it! Once ReadyBoost is activated for a drive there is nothing more for you to do.

Note: ReadyBoost won’t make a noticeable difference on computers with 2GB of RAM or more.

Disable ReadyBoost

1. Click Start and then click Computer on the Start Menu.
2. Right-click the drive ReadyBoost is enabled on and select Properties.
3. Click the ReadyBoost tab.
4. Check off Do not use this devise.

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5. Click OK.