What is ReadyBoost?

ReadyBoost is an operating system feature included with Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system. It works by using flash memory, USB 2.0 drive, SD card, CompactFlash or any kind of portable massive flash storage as a drive for disk cache.

Windows ReadyBoost allows Vista to use compatible USB flash drives as cache instead of the hard drive. This is faster because it has been shown that small random reads and writes on flash RAM can be 8-10 times faster than caching them to one of your hard drives.

For a device to be compatible and useful it must conform to the following requirements:

• The device must be at least USB 2.0
• The device must be able to do 3.5 MB/s for 4 KB random reads uniformly across the entire device and 2.5 MB/s for 512 KB random writes uniformly across the device.
• The device has to have at least 64mb of free space