ReadyBoost for XP - How I TRIPLED my system performance for less than $45

[facialfreak]

Yep ... you read it right!

And I am not talking about a 5 year old system either ...

This is a 3.2 Ghz Intel Pentium4 EE HT with 1GB of RAM - bought last August!

eBoostr™ allows you to use an additional drive (flash memory or hard disk) as another layer of performance-boosting cache for your Windows XP®. There is no need to purchase a Vista upgrade to get the benefits of the Vista’s ReadyBoost® technology. With the newly developed eBoostr™, the booting of your OS and applications startup get much faster thanks to the smart caching mechanism.

I reformatted my 1GB Kingston Data Traveler USB key to utilize all the space on one partition (I had formatted it for 2 partitions with Ubuntu Portable installed on it previously). Kinston Data Traveler USB keys have a very decent "random read speed" (approx. 7600 KB/s), but you will see definite performance increases using any flash-based memory with a random read speed greater than 2500 KB/s.

The eBoostr™ software is FREE to try for an unlimited length of time, but until it is registered, it will only work for the first 4 hours after each time you reboot. It will cost you $29 to buy the fully registered license. (+ $15.95 I paid for the USB key = $44.95 total cost)

I've been playing with it for about 10 hours now, and I am thoroughly impressed to the point that I just purchased it using Paypal.

Here is a screenshot to show you I am not blowing smoke out my ass ...

MY COMPUTER'S ACCESS SPEED INCREASED OVER 300% AFTER ENABLING THE eBoostr VIRTUAL CACHE!!

[paul7]

I think i must try it too

[N/A]

You have a Pm lol.

Ok it says it's 300% faster but more importantly do you feel it? I doubt that a modern day can be 3 times faster. In any case this sounds like the virtual memory thingy to me. I used to have a mac with this cache thing too, can't recall the name.

[Mihx]

Sorry, but I'm not buying it - neither the software (obviously, since I'm running Vista, without using ReadyBoost) nor the 3x performance improvement claims.
In which areas exactly has performance improved three times (aside from the probably rather irrelevant number in that screenshot)? Windows boot? Possible I guess. A perceived (but not necessarily measured) "three times" increase in application responsiveness when you're pushing the upper limits of your physical RAM? Possibly.
Three times increase in performance where raw calculation power is required? Obviously not.

Vista ReadyBoost (which this supposedly emulates) is basically a cheap and slower substitute for adding an extra Gigabyte RAM or several.
And in this case it isn't even particularly cheap. Can't you almost buy a stick of RAM for $45 these days? And then you've got to add the price of the USB stick on top of the software - though of course I guess the point of ReadyBoost is that a lot of people will already have those lying around.

I guess there is a slim chance that a ReadyBoost emulation might actually be a bit more helpful on XP than on Vista, as the latter OS is already using a more advanced caching system (one of the reasons so many Vista users complain about too much memory use, without realizing that it's actually being used for something efficient, rather than just sitting around doing nothing).
My advice though - buy an extra Gig of RAM instead, or first, and then give the software a shot afterwards.

[diablom]

hmm, will it help for my AMD Duron 800mhz with 384mb RAM?

[SleazyBear]

First you have to understand how cache works. lets do a math problem to show you how it works.. lets say you add 99 +2 you add the nine plus two so you have to carry the one, how do you carry it, it goes to cache. In all my years as geek, I have seen where a slave drive used for cache does increase the speed of the machine. Useing a high speed thumb drive would be good for this instance. I have not tried it yet and dought I will but I dont see why you cant set xp or 98 to use the thumb drive as a cache drive. As long as the bios picks up the thumb drive as a drive on bootup.
Will this work, on paper yep it will work. In reality, with a machine running 2 to 4 gigs of ram as most machines can do these days, in some cases it would be cheaper to buy actual memory, there is no program that can boost your machine than actual memory. Now useing a thumb drive as actual memory does increase the memory so I am not exactly sure how much of a boost you would get over real memory. Would I buy this, No. I would look into real memory. I have had these so called memory boost programs in the past, all they did was clear the real memory onto the hard drive as cache, did I get that much out of them, nope.. seemed to just bog the machine down trying to clear memory into the cache.

[tgpfarm]

All this would be doing is doing is mounting your Virtual Memory on a thumbdrive instead of your hard drive. Remember that flash memory has a predetermined set amount of write cycles it can do before that 'cell dies'. This will only speed up your computer if you use alot of Virtual Memory.

[apcwebmaster]

another free way to increase performance is to either disable the page file or place it on the flash drive, I know after disabling the page file on my system I noticed a lot more responsiveness in XP so if you got fast RAM it's worth a try (should also help preserve your HDD life, afaik RAM doesn't 'wear out')

I got two Kingston 1GB's aswell so I'll give eboost/page file on flashdrive a try

[facialfreak]

OK .... you all know better than I do ... and I build computers in the brick and mortar world for a living ...

Sleazy ... I dont know where to begin with your crash course in 1981 computer caches ...

Cache and memory serve too completely different purposes ... and anybody that knows a thing or two about hosting or networking will know how important your CACHE is ....

But since everybody here knows better ... that's fine ... fucking delete this thread where I am obviously trying to rip people off -evident by my (lack of) referral ID ...

Do you people really think that I would have posted this if I had not benchmarked the fuck outta it, and run all kinds of speed tests for myself? And more importantly, do you really think that somebody as computer savvy as myself would have spent $30 on it if I was not more than 100% convinced it made a difference ...

There is a saying ... "Ignorance is bliss ..."

So please carry on ......

[fresh]

damn 300% thats some good boost, starnge its only because of some program

[apcwebmaster]

can I ask what benchmark tools you use so I can test both no page file/readyboost together and alone (not being confrontational), I want to squeeze the most performance out of my new celeron laptop

[facialfreak]

Originally Posted by apcwebmaster

afaik RAM doesn't 'wear out'

OH?????

I have a whole drawer full of wasted RAM that has "worn out" that would prove you wrong ...

If RAM did not wear out .... there would be no purpose whatsoever for MemTest now, would there ???

Bottom like is this ... There is no other way to get the sort of performance increase that I posted in XP .... other than to upgrade to Vista, that uses a totally different architecture than Win32 (x86), and you guessed it .... has a totally brand new file caching system that is more than 150% more efficient than previous caches.

[facialfreak]

Originally Posted by apcwebmaster

can I ask what benchmark tools you use so I can test both no page file/readyboost together and alone (not being confrontational), I want to squeeze the most performance out of my new celeron laptop

SANDRA is one of the better benchmarking suites available. It is trusted by more Network Administrators than any other benchmarking software commercially available.

SiSoftware SANDRA XII - Benchmark, diagnostic software

[apcwebmaster]

Originally Posted by facialfreak

OH?????

I have a whole drawer full of wasted RAM that has "worn out" that would prove you wrong ...

If RAM did not wear out .... there would be no purpose whatsoever for MemTest now, would there ???

I know RAM can die but it's not because of wear and tear in a physical sense, like when talking about things with moving parts

Originally Posted by facialfreak

SANDRA...

thanks

[apcwebmaster]

I'm just formatting my flash drive now, what file system should I use? I assume NTFS but I'm not sure

edit:

I've been using Eboostr for a while now. A basic problem I see is the lack of documentation at the moment regarding almost all details of it's use. Even Microsoft's readyboost seem to lack definitive documentation regarding file systems, cache sizes and speeds, etc.
From my personal experience, a flash drive cannot be made to respond well using NTFS, or FAT16.
FAT32 produces far higher read speeds, but I've also seen evidence of rapid deterioration of the drive- succesively lowered read speeds every time the cache is rebuilt.
I'm now testing it on a secondary (slave) internal hard drive partition using NTFS and that's producing the most stable and visible results so far. A problem with building the cache on an NTFS partition seems to be severe fragmentation. On a flash drive, I was not able to defragment it, which is not a problem with the internal drive.

deviantART: Comment on Eboostr for Increaasing Performance, Any Thoughts? by ~Sixthcrusifix

seems fat32 is the way to go for flash drives

[facialfreak]

Originally Posted by apcwebmaster

I'm just formatting my flash drive now, what file system should I use? I assume NTFS but I'm not sure

edit:
deviantART: Comment on Eboostr for Increaasing Performance, Any Thoughts? by ~Sixthcrusifix

seems fat32 is the way to go for flash drives

Unless you need advanced network security, FAT32 is a much better file system that is readable across all platforms, and yes would be a better choice for a flash drive.

[ScreaM]

I'll give it a whirl, thanks.

[apcwebmaster]

one more thing I should baselessly recommend is to set your flash drive to be 'optimized for performance' instead of 'optimized for quick removal' if you don't know what that means don't touch it

[facialfreak]

Originally Posted by apcwebmaster

one more thing I should baselessly recommend is to set your flash drive to be 'optimized for performance' instead of 'optimized for quick removal' if you don't know what that means don't touch it

Never set any USB appliances to optimize for quick removal!!

USB DISK EJECTOR

works 500% better than the windows Safely Remove Hardware joke does ...

[facialfreak]

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND OPPORTUNITIES ?????

GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK!!!


I HAVE NO GAIN FINANCIALLY OR ELSEWISE!!

Sounds like somebody's abusing his status because I disagreed with him?

The moral of this story : Kiss moderator's asses, or else they will bury your thread in Announcements and Opportunites even if is is not one iota of either!!