ReadyBoost -- what advantage to multiple flash / SSD drives?
Starting with Win 7, an older notebook (2 Gb RAM, USB 2.0 ports): it looks like I can easily add a 32Gb ReadyBoost with either exFAT or NTFS formatting. It also looks like one may add additional 32Gb flash drives for additional performance.
What might I gain from having the additional RB capacity? And rather than tying up my few USB ports, can I partition a 120Gb flash into 32Gb drives? Thanks in advance.
What might I gain from having the additional RB capacity? And rather than tying up my few USB ports, can I partition a 120Gb flash into 32Gb drives? Thanks in advance.
rindi
An SSD would give you far better performance than readyboost. Also USB 2 isn't very fast so on a USB you wouldn't get a lot of improvement.
The Ready Boost Technology works like a read write cache for the internal hard disc as well as for external USB discs. The sense is to use the faster read / write performance and the lower latency to accelerate disc performance, as parts of the data stay in the cache, so can re-read or the computer do not have tp wait until the data is written to the disc.
There are also hybrid discs on the market which are using a similar method. They usually uses smaller SSD in combination with a larger physical disc.
And also in larger environments they also use SDD cache arrays in front of large hard disc arrays to boost them up. Physical disc are much cheaper and has more capacity in comparison with SSD
What you can gain depends. In the meanwhile, you get even high performance harddiscs with up to 100-120 MB/s. If your computer has a slot for a flash card, then the advantage is under question. Flash memory has a lower latency, but to get flash cards with 80 MB/s and more is more expensive than a high speed harddisc.
So to invest the money into a new harddisc may make more sense.
In comparison to flash you should put SSD into account, while harddisc have an I/O rate of 100-200 and read / write speeds of around 80-120 MB/s, a SSD may offer up to 100.000 I/O (due to the lower latency) and read / write speeds around 500 MB/s
As a flash card brings you some performance advantages for older disc, more or less not really an advantage for newer discs, a SDD would bring a real boost.
I guess, if your slot is constructed for a 32 GB flash, it either will not take a larger card or it just addresses only 32 GB. For testing it is a try.
There are also hybrid discs on the market which are using a similar method. They usually uses smaller SSD in combination with a larger physical disc.
And also in larger environments they also use SDD cache arrays in front of large hard disc arrays to boost them up. Physical disc are much cheaper and has more capacity in comparison with SSD
What you can gain depends. In the meanwhile, you get even high performance harddiscs with up to 100-120 MB/s. If your computer has a slot for a flash card, then the advantage is under question. Flash memory has a lower latency, but to get flash cards with 80 MB/s and more is more expensive than a high speed harddisc.
So to invest the money into a new harddisc may make more sense.
In comparison to flash you should put SSD into account, while harddisc have an I/O rate of 100-200 and read / write speeds of around 80-120 MB/s, a SSD may offer up to 100.000 I/O (due to the lower latency) and read / write speeds around 500 MB/s
As a flash card brings you some performance advantages for older disc, more or less not really an advantage for newer discs, a SDD would bring a real boost.
I guess, if your slot is constructed for a 32 GB flash, it either will not take a larger card or it just addresses only 32 GB. For testing it is a try.
If you're replacing your spinning disk with an SSD, there's no need for readyboost. That's designed back when flash and SSD were more expensive. No need to add an extra delay in copying to a secondary swap space.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
ASKER
Provided in my answer.