The improved Readyboost technology in Windows 7 now supports a maximum cache size of 32 Gigabytes opposed to the 4 Gigabyte limit in Windows Vista. Windows 7 also supports up to eight Readyboost devices compared to one in Vista and can improve the startup performance as it can be used during startup as well.

The Windows Readyboost Monitor is a system tray application that will display information about the Readyboost performance on the computer system. Information that are monitored and displayed include the read and write speeds and totals, the cached size, compressed size and the cached and compressed ratio.

The program starts monitoring the Readyboost performance right after installation and startup. It can be an excellent tool to analyse the utilization of the Readyboost technology to see if it does make sense to use it in the operating system (if nothing gets cached there is not really a need for it).

ReadyBoost Monitor is available for download at the developer’s website. It is compatible with Windows Vista and requires the Microsoft .net Framework 3 to be installed.

Windows 7 users can use the Performance Monitor to check on the Readyboost performance in their operating system. The easiest way to get there is to enter [perf] in the start menu search programs and files form.

Click the [Add] button.

Select [ReadyBoost Cache] from the available counters.

Results.

It is not likely that the developer of ReadyBoost Monitor will add support for Windows 7. The last update of the program dates back to 2008 and lots of users have left comments in the guestbook (the place the developer asked users to leave comments for future versions) asking for Windows 7 support.

The portable software Readyboost Monitor will monitor the Readyboost performance of a computer system. The main interface of the application will display information about the read and write speed, total read and write data and cached data. It will also display an activity bar that displays the Readyboost usage over time.

The minimized application will display an icon in the Windows system tray that displays the read and write speed when hoovered on. Readyboost Monitor has a size of only 56 Kilobytes. The program requires Microsoft Windows Vista and the Microsoft .net Framework 3.0.

There is however a trick that enables many USB devices for Readyboost even though they did not pass the initial test. To do that do the following. Right-click the device that you want to use for Readyboost and select properties. Switch to the Readyboost tab and uncheck “Stop retesting this device when I plug it in”. The old test values are stored in the registry which means that we have to edit some settings there to make Vista believe that the USB device meets all of the requirements. Unplug the device from the computer before you proceed.

Go to the key HKLM (Local Machine) -> SOFTWARE -> Microsoft -> Windows NT -> CurrentVersion -> EMDgmt which displays a list of all known USB devices on your computer. Choose the one that you want to use for Readyboost and edit the following keys in the right pane:

• Device Status – Change that value to 2
• ReadSpeedKbs – Change the value to 1000
• WriteSpeedKbs – Change the value to 1000 as well

After that is done you can use the USB device for Readyboost.

It is pretty easy to enable Readyboost in Vista. Plug in your usb stick or flash device and wait for the autostart menu. Select Speed up my System using Windows Readyboost from the menu. Windows Vista will perform some tests and display information if the device is not compatible with Readyboost. After that is done Readyboost is activated and Windows Vista uses the additional free space to speed up some disk reads.

The devices have to meet some requirements like having a size between 256 MB and 4 GB. Other requirements are USB 2.0 support, at least 64 Mb of free space and 3.5 MB/s read speeds for 4 kB random reads spread uniformly across the entire device and 2.5 MB/s write speeds for 512 kB random writes spread uniformly across the device.

This is a great way to improve performance without adding new ram to the system. It is definitely not the best way to improve the performance of Vista but a good method to achieve better results fast. If you have the choice to buy more ram do that, if you can’t do that use the flash device instead.

Tom Archer from Microsoft answers some of the most common questions about Readyboost in a blog post.

Update: Please note that Readyboost is also an integral part of Microsoft’s current operating system Windows 7, and that the next version of Windows, usually referred to as Windows 8, will also support Readyboost. Options have remained the same so far, although it is a bit early to tell if they remain the same in retail versions of Windows 8.