ReadyBoost what?

So, today, I heard about this fan-dangled ReadyBoost thing in Windows, and I thought I’d try it out.

From what I understand, I can use a USB memory stick as extra RAM for my PC – this sounds great, as I’ve recently bought an 8GB memory stick.  It has to be worth a try!

Side note: Considering that I practically *live* on a PC, I’m really surprised that this one slipped by me.  I’m a bit taken a-back that something that has the power to do this, is something that I already own, and I can try out for nothing, other than a little time!

So, here goes!  Working totally off of intuition alone, lets see how far I get.

Here’s a few techie-details about what I’m working with:

• System Spec: Dell Vostro running Windows 7 Ultimate
• Memory Stick: SanDisk Cruzer Blade 8GB (approx. £14)

Crack-on.

So, I’m guessing I need to insert USB memory stick into the PC, as this is slightly important to the process.  This is the box that Windows 7 makes happen:

I’m guessing it’s the last option that I need, so I’ll go for that one. Here’s the next screen that appear:

In the screen above, I’ve got the option to:

• Do not use this device
• Dedicate this device to ReadyBoost
• Use this device.

It appears that I am limited to using 4GB of the available 8 on the stick, so I’ll go in heavy with the ‘Dedicate this device’ to see where that takes me.  Clicking ‘Ok’ makes the following box appear:

Once this has finished, the above box disappears, leaving me to wonder what’s happened, if anything. Lets go looking..

Inside the ‘Computer’ screen, the drive appears to be used, around the 4GB mark…

Checking what’s inside (because I’m nosey) here’s what it shows:

So, that’ll be my 4GB file then. Now. What does it actually do? Hmm. I don’t actually know, nor how to use it.

Time to start reading the manual. Or Wikipedia, at least. Here’s what it says:

“ReadyBoost is a component of Microsoft Windows, first introduced with Microsoft's Windows Vista in 2006 and bundled with Windows 7 in 2009. It works by using flash memory, a USB flash drive, SD card, CompactFlash, external hard drive or any kind of portable flash mass storage system as a drive for disk cache.

ReadyBoost is also used to facilitate SuperFetch, which allows it to perform analysis of boot-time disk usage patterns and creates a cache which is used in subsequent system boots

Using ReadyBoost-capable flash memory (NAND memory devices) for caching allows Windows 7 and Vista to service random disk reads with performance that is typically 80-100 times faster than random reads from traditional hard drives. This caching applies to all disk content, not just the page file or system DLLs. Flash devices typically are slower than a hard disk for sequential I/O so, to maximize performance, ReadyBoost includes logic that recognizes large, sequential read requests and has the hard disk service these requests.

When a compatible device is plugged in, the Windows AutoPlay dialog offers an additional option to use the flash drive to speed up the system; an additional "ReadyBoost" tab is added to the drive's properties dialog where the amount of space to be used can be configured. 250 MB to 256 GB of flash memory can be assigned (4 GB in the x86 versions of Vista and Windows 7). ReadyBoost compresses and encrypts, with AES-128, all data that is placed on the flash device; Microsoft has stated that a 2:1 compression ratio is typical, so that a 4 GB cache could contain upwards of 8 GB of data.”

So, it appears that after a few minutes of looking online, that’s all I need to do to make use of the space on the memory stick.  There’s no obvious signs that the USB stick is in use, such as any increase inside Task Manager, as that still shows the 4GB of real RAM on my PC. 

I can only assume that is what it needs, and I’ll have to check back another time with any results I find on using it.

In terms of testing this, I’ve got a load of videos of my little son to mess around with; I could try that to see what effect it has, if any. Watch this space.

#BrettsMovieTest

“The best thing on Twitter…”
“Not a bad quiz, I suppose”
”Yeah, I quite like it…”

So, for one reason or another, I started posting movie questions on Twitter, and it’s sort of grown a little more than just that, which is open to all, providing you have a Twitter account, of course!

http://twitter.com/#search?q=brettsmovietest

or follow me http://twitter.com/brettrigby

#BrettsMovieTest is exactly that – a fun, meaningless, points-only quiz on movies using screen-shots that I’ve taken from the movie myself;  The shots are not always the key shots as used in movie’s promotional material, as that would be far, far too easy. Instead, I try and get glimpses from the film, of scenes that you wouldn’t probably guess unless you have actually seen the movie.

Of course, me screen-grabbing ‘moments’ from the movie means that it could go either way – some shots I’ve taken, I think I'll really puzzle people for a couple of days, (such as the shot from Ferris Beuller’s Day Off - below), but turn out to be really easy and vice versa!

I don’t really know why I started the movie test, but I think I was bored at home one afternoon and would see how good my mates were at movie trivia.  If anything, I thought that those who were following me at the time who soon de-follow me sharpish, but if anything, more followers have come along because of it, which is great!

I started to have to worry about keeping track of the scores, and back in the day where there was only a few questions out in the wild, I had the winners marked on a torn-off scrap of paper.  As things moved up a peg or two, I started using Excel, but then I ended up creating a sub-site on my personal domain name just for the movie test, which is over at brettrigby.com/brettsmovietest.

But I’ve recently decided to ditch the Excel spreadsheet in favour of just keeping the scores on the website, as I end-up storing the info on the winners in two places, and then forget to keep one up to date, as they’re not linked or anything fancy like that.

Process

People have asked how I’m getting these clips, so I thought I’d mention about the process of posting a screen-shot.

First of all, I have to pick a movie that isn’t too obscure, but on the other hand, too distinguishable a movie will only make for an easy question.

So, once I’ve decided on the next movie, it’s simply a case of getting the disc into my PC, spinning it up in Windows Media Player and then the hunt begins for the shot.

As I said earlier, key people from the movie are out. I made the mistake in the past of getting a screen-shot of Clint Eastwood holding a particularly iconic handgun into the view of the camera, and the amount of people who said that it was too easy was crazy.  It was, I agree. Because of this, main characters are out, unless they’re obscured in some way, or facing away from the camera enough to make you think.

Once I’ve got the shot I want, it’s as technical as pausing the movie and then starting up the Snipping Tool inside Windows 7, which I think is an absolutely brilliant snipping tool, almost made for this purpose!

The JPEG image is then saved to my local PC and then through the wonders of the HootSuite Windows Twitter client, it’s uploaded to ow.ly and is posted out for all to guess on.

I try to reply to all incorrect guesses and send the message out as a broadcast message, so that all participants of the test can see.

Once the correct answer has been submitted (only through Twitter) then again the details are broadcasted to all, as soon as I can.

Mistakes, fixed by the Twitter Timeline

Yes, it’s true, I have made the odd mistake here and there on all of this, but seeing as it’s only for fun, so it’s not so bad. The biggest mistake that I’ve made is to respond to a message containing the correct answer, before reading back on the Twitter Timeline to see if anyone else guessed it first.

Obviously, I have rectified any problems or mistakes as soon as possible, but it helps that people playing along are on the ball and notify me pronto! Any more that come along, I’m sure I’ll get told about!

Where/where will it end?

Good question! I suppose when I run out of movies to rifle through! I haven’t got any immediate plans as yet to bring it to a holt, but then I didn’t have any plans to begin with!

I was quite surprised about how competitive some people are when playing it! It’s probably what as driven me to carry it on, to be fair.  Getting a bit of feedback occasionally is good - It makes it a bit more interesting for me doing the test, as I try to think of movies that they not have seen, that may just vex them long enough to get something constructive done!

Anyway, as long as people think it’s ok, not bad, or adequate, then I’ll continue trying to keep everyone on their toes!