U3 Readyboost flash drives problem

[Guest Andrew]

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]

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]

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.