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Readyboost for spinners: good? Bad? Irrelevant?

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magellan

Member
Joined
Jul 20, 2002
I'm thinking of using my new SSD as a Readyboost
cache for my HDD's, but in a non-dedicated role
(because I want to use some of it as a 5 GiB non-volatile
RAMdisk image).

Is Readyboost a technology that gets better as it
learns what apps/files to cache? So it takes some
time to actually make a difference?

What's the advantage to using Readyboost in a
dedicated role?
 
Doesnt sound like you'll see a big improvement.

Computers with fast hard disks (such as 7,200- or 10,000-RPM disks) might realize minimal performance gains because of the already high disk I/O. ReadyBoost will read files from the cache only when doing so will improve performance. Hard disks outperform flash drives during sequential reads, but flash drives are faster during non-sequential reads (because of the latency caused when the drive head must move to a different disk sector).Therefore, ReadyBoost reads from the cache only for non-sequential reads.

Source
 
Aren't sequential accesses for newer SSD's faster than HDD's? I had thought top tier SSD's
were faster than spinners for everything?
 
Well yes..

Why not just put your OS on the SSD and use the mechanical for storage...?

Access time is the biggest thing you notice navigating windows, its what allows the desktop to be instantly usable.

Readyboost ONLY increases non-sequential reads though.
 
Well yes..

Why not just put your OS on the SSD and use the mechanical for storage...?

Access time is the biggest thing you notice navigating windows, its what allows the desktop to be instantly usable.

Readyboost ONLY increases non-sequential reads though.

^^^yeah, that's the plan.

If you try to use readyboost with an ssd drive as the OS it will simply tell you to forget it and not allow the option. :)
 
All my applications/games are stored on a 1 TiB spinner and
there are far too many applications/games there to fit on
any inexpensive SSD. Windows 7 boots fast enough for me,
I actually have games that have start up times >= the boot
time for windows 7 (minus the time it takes me to type in
my password).

I've decided to try out Intel's Rapid Storage Technology
driver that allows for up to a 64GiB SSD cache for HDD accesses.
I've read it makes a definitive improvement across the board
for HDD read access and can even do so for write access
if you set it up right. Apparently the Intel tech doesn't cache
files but LBA's, unlike ReadyBoost.
 
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