OCZ Release Flash Drives Designed For Vista ReadyBoost

[PV5150]

OCZ Technology Group, today announced an exciting new addition to its award-winning lineup of flash drives. VBoost USB 2.0 Flash Drives are optimized for Windows® Vista™ ReadyBoost™. More in the news article...

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[Rastalovich]

I`m not clued in on the benefits of using a flash drive as a boost for the system.

How does using a usb device to provide 1,2,4 GB storage boost a pc more than DDR2 ?

How does using these usb devices benefit u more than allocation/mounting a psuedo usb device on u`r harddrive than can be any size u like ?

Only thing I can see as a benefit, obvious not knowing the non-logic of it all, is that u can plug in u`r portable flash drive into any pc with less than 2G whilst u`r on-the-move.

As for home use, I don`t understand the theory - u already have faster ways at hand.

[FarFarAway]

I've seen a speedboost using as high-speed USB 4gb stick. everything that I access a lot seems to get cached on the stick and it makes loading and stuff more "snappy"

[Rastalovich]

Can it access the 4g stick faster than u`r hard drive ?

[llwyd]

Originally Posted by name='Rastalovich'

Can it access the 4g stick faster than u`r hard drive ?

well usb is higher bandwidth and will mean transfers can be made while the HDD head is busy

[Rastalovich]

Try this test.

Whilst copying a substancial file (~500m) from u`r harddrive to another part of the drive:-

Run something like HDTach on the harddrive, then repeat the test on u`r usb drive.

See which is faster.

(shouldn`t have single drive setups if u`r after speed really)

[FarFarAway]

File transfer speed is not the point of readyboost tbh. Check MS website for the papers.

Generally it makes windows quicker to respond to frequently used programs and as I said more "snappy"

[Rastalovich]

MS papers generally waffle on for pages where a nice paragraph would do nicely.

Is it something akin to putting "frequently used files" on a flash drive, ala a better version of the dll cache, and relying on the burst access of the drive to be sufficient to capture the files as they`re not large in size.

"Snappy" just doesn`t cut it, although it`d be a good description of the above if infact that was what it was doing.

Seems a good idea for peoples on the move, having to perhaps deal with pcs not up to the spec they`re used to, not necessarily for a nicely setup pc they have at home.

Just can`t get it out of my head that it`s a great idea for a pc u setup at home, with other alternatives. Surely if this were the case the likes of OCZ would be selling one u could attach directly to this inside of u`r pc and not have to cater for something `hanging off` the external usb port.

[FarFarAway]

Aye it's mostly for laptop users etc who want to upgrade RAM without too much hassle. It acts as the RAM kinda afaik

Long time since I properley read the papers