Ready boost, a feature first introduced in Vista, enables you to use USB Thumb drives as extra RAM for your PC. However, I never really thought that this got much attention, for whatever reason. I have therefore, just remembered that this feature existed when I plugged in my USB drive in order to transfer a file across from my Apple laptop (Network icons had disappeared in ‘Finder’ and Live Sync didn’t want to play).
If you have no idea what I am on about try this for yourself.
Insert your USB Thumbdrive. Right click on it in Explorer and go to Properties. Click on the Readyboost Tab.
You will then have 3 options on how you want Windows to use it.
Pick one which suits your fancy and click Ok.
What effect this actually has on your system, I am unsure as I have not seen much reduction in RAM usage. My PC currently has 4Gb’s worth of RAM sticks, all of which is accessible. My USB drive is also meant to be 4Gb’s but in reality is only 3.77Gb’s.
More testing to follow….
