Guest Andrew Posted October 9, 2008 Posted October 9, 2008 2 SanDisk Cruzer Micro 8GB U3 Readyboost flash drives are on their way to me from Amazon, which at £9.99 each post paid are the cheapest branded one I’ve seen to-date. I’ve found u3 to be an expensive gimmick and would normally use a little app called u3 uninstall which returns the flash to its original non-u3 state. However, not yet familiar with Vista Readyboost, has anyone any idea if using the u3 uninstall will affect the Readyboost aspect of these drives? I'm still using XP home until support runs out. - Thanks - Andy PS - Have also posed this question to Windows Vista General Discussion.
Guest Ken Blake, MVP Posted October 9, 2008 Posted October 9, 2008 Re: U3 Readyboost flash drives problem On Wed, 8 Oct 2008 20:09:00 -0700, Andrew <Andrew@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote: > 2 SanDisk Cruzer Micro 8GB U3 Readyboost flash drives are on their way to me > from Amazon, which at £9.99 each post paid are the cheapest branded one I’ve > seen to-date. > I’ve found u3 to be an expensive gimmick and would normally use a little app > called u3 uninstall which returns the flash to its original non-u3 state. > However, not yet familiar with Vista Readyboost, has anyone any idea if > using the u3 uninstall will affect the Readyboost aspect of these drives? > I'm still using XP home until support runs out. - Thanks - Andy > PS - Have also posed this question to Windows Vista General Discussion. I'm not in favor of Readyboost at all. I think the whole idea was a poor one. It's ineffective on computers with enough ram, and on those with inadequate RAM, it's a poor value; for the same or slightly more money, you could add more RAM and get much better performance. -- Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience Please Reply to the Newsgroup
Guest VanguardLH Posted October 9, 2008 Posted October 9, 2008 Re: U3 Readyboost flash drives problem Andrew wrote: > 2 SanDisk Cruzer Micro 8GB U3 Readyboost flash drives are on their way to me > from Amazon, which at £9.99 each post paid are the cheapest branded one I¢ve > seen to-date. > I¢ve found u3 to be an expensive gimmick and would normally use a little app > called u3 uninstall which returns the flash to its original non-u3 state. > However, not yet familiar with Vista Readyboost, has anyone any idea if > using the u3 uninstall will affect the Readyboost aspect of these drives? > I'm still using XP home until support runs out. - Thanks - Andy > PS - Have also posed this question to Windows Vista General Discussion. Don't be misled that electronics are infallible. Just because a USB thumb drive uses flash memory doesn't mean it won't wear out. They can only endure a maximum number of writes or erases. Flash memory can only be flashed so many times. Although electronic, they wear out. How often have you written files (or deleted them or done anything to update the flash drive)? If you are using a program that updates its files on the flash drive, remember that all those updates count against the endurance of the device. Some apps could produce several thousand updates per minute and do so as long as the app is running. Using Flash memory for Vista's ReadyBoost as a disk buffer means generating write cycles at a far greater rate and number than by a user that saves, edits, or deletes music or data files. In Windows versions without ReadyBoost, some users will use Flash memory for pagefile space but the number of writes to the pagefile are very high and will accelerate when the Flash memory fails. Write/erase endurance specs are usually hard to find and rarely divulged by the device makers (so you have to read articles by the flash memory manufacturers but that will tell you the endurance of the chip, not what masking algorithm is employed by the flash drive manufacturer that used that flash chip). Typical MTBF for Flash memory is one million cycles. Sounds high when YOU are the one creating, editing, or deleting files but that is small for disk buffer or pagefile usage. "Like all flash memory devices, flash drives can sustain only a limited number of write/erase cycles before failure. In normal use, mid-range flash drives currently on the market will support several million cycles, although write operations will gradually slow as the device ages" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keydrive). "Flash memory has a finite number of erase-write cycles (most commercially available flash products are guaranteed to withstand 1 million programming cycles) so that care has to be taken when moving hard-drive based applications" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory). Flash drives should NOT be used for permanent storage and any files placed on them should be non-critical files (i.e., you can afford to lose them the same day you put them onto the flash drive). Just like with a hard drive, anything you put onto a flash drive - if important to you - should be backed up to provide a second copy. Flash drives are less prone to physical abuse than hard drives, but then your hard drive, after installed, receives little physical abuse whereas you are subjecting the flash drive to static, dirt, wear from insertion/extraction, physical shock, and other environmental factors. Unlike your system or video RAM, flash memory does wear out as it suffers from electric field stress (thin oxide stress). Over time, oxide stress from repeated program and erase operations may degrade the gate oxide layer to cause the transistor to malfunction. This contributes to faulty operation of the flash memory device. Accordingly, there is a need for a method of detecting a transistor error caused by the degradation of the gate oxide layer. That is why these devices will incorporate fault-tolerant schemes to mask the failures. More masking as more errors occur results in more redirects that slow performance, and there is usually a maximum (spare space used for the masking) after which the device catastrophically fails. ReadyBoost or putting the pagefile on Flash memory doesn't speed up Vista by much and often slows it down. It only helps if the sectors for the data are scattered to different cylinders on the hard disk for a speed boost of around 4 to 6%. If the disk has been defragmented or the data is otherwise serially retrieved from the hard disk, Flash drives actually slow performance. Flash drives have much slower throughput than hard drives. Flash memory has a bandwidth of around 3.5MB/s (28Mb/s) for 4KB transfers and around 2.5MB/s (20Mb/s) for 512KB transfers. An ATA-100 IDE hard drive can sustain much higher average transfer rates without even considering its burst mode. Only if the hard disk's heads have to do a lot of bouncing between cylinders might Flash memory then outperform a hard disk. What most users report as the noticed speedup by using Flash memory for the pagefile is a slightly shorter time to load applications, but a faster spinning hard disk or one that uses perpendicular recording to pack the bits closer together to effect a higher transfer rate do that, too. You gain little overall speedup by using Flash for pagefile space but incur a greater liability to system stability with a device that will slowdown over continued high usage due to masking and will eventually catastrophically fail. ReadyBoost is a problem waiting to happen, and when it happens (not if it happens) becomes shorter and shorter. The fuse will burn out. Using Flash memory as pagefile space means eventually you get a hung or crashed OS or memory corruption errors which means losing data (or worse in saving the corrupted data). Flash memory is significantly slower than physical system RAM and can only provide a tiny speedup for highly fragmented files on the hard disk. Rather than waste money on a Flash thumb drive for ReadyBoost or for pagefile space, spend it on more system RAM or get a faster hard disk. You should not incorporate an obviously weak component (e.g., Flash) within your mass storage subsystem. Just because Flash memory drives are newer doesn't mean they are ideal choices to supplant older technology.
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