PNY flash drives, are they compatable with readyboost

[carlrowley1]

Hello.

Windows vista readyboost, can anyone tell me if this usb flash drive is compatable with readyboost
Its a 16gb PNY flash drive. or even the 8gb

http://www3.pny.com/category_buymulti.aspx?Category_ID=53

I do have some usb flash drives, but they are not compatable, and are not PNY

[patio]

According to MS any flash drive should work ....readyboost will scan the drive first and let you know...
More Info...

[carlrowley1]

According to MS any flash drive should work ....readyboost will scan the drive first and let you know...
More Info...

thanks patio

I bought a 2gb usb flash drive a few months ago (not this PNY make) and that did not work, it said something like "this device is not compatable"  or something like that.

As you say readyboost will scan the drive first and let you know, so according to MS any flash drive should work, as long as its at least 2gb or more.

So is this not a contradiction in terms because it will scan and let you know, so there for any flash drive will not work, if it is going to let you know if it will work.

Anyway patio, slight mistake i made, i did not click on what features this flash drive has (HOW  STUPID OF ME) and it turns out this does work with readyboost
Probably because i had been looking at others, of a less well known make, that did not give you this information

http://www3.pny.com/8GB-New-Attacheacute-USB-20-Flash-Drive-P2665C53.aspx?UserID=20108378&SessionID=6sJ67sPmUohtRJLmX2P6

I do need one and thought i might as well get one that works with readyboost as well, in case i might need to use this readyboost one day..

Cheers patio

[patio]

No Problem and Welcome Aboard !

The ones you want to stay away from are the U3 drives...these are pre-loaded with propietary software designed to assist runng applications straight from the flash drive without installing it.

Good Luck.

[carlrowley1]

The ones you want to stay away from are the U3 drives...

Nice tip patio, i ll make a note of that....................thanks

[soybean]

Last time I looked at flash drives in any local stores, I saw some labeled as "Optimized for ReadyBoost" or words to the effect.  I don't know how significant this is; just thought I'd mention it.

I tried using a 2GB flash drive with my Compaq laptop for awhile but abandoned the idea due to undesirable behavior from my computer.  One of the problems was that, if the computer went into Sleep mode, ReadyBoost was not ready when the computer was awakened and the only ready to get it working again was to restart.  Besides that, I could not see a noticeable benefit from using the flash drive for ReadyBoost. I later increased RAM from 1GB to 2GB in the computer. 

[patio]

Good point Soybean...
With RAM prices where they are right now readyboost is actually a performance trade off....
I didn't find it that much of an improvement when i tested it with an 8G stick myself.

[BC_Programmer]

I wrote a small test program and found that my old flash drive (256MB) could hardly maintain a 1.5MB-2MB transfer rate, whereas my newer SanDisk of the same size managed over 25MB/s, and my 8GB sticks each had a read rate of about 80MB/s, sometimes bursting to 100MB/s.