Some thought about Readyboost

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cchsiao · #1 Post by **cchsiao** » Thu May 10, 2007 2:22 pm

I think everybody using X4x series Thinkpad is angry with it's slow hard drive. One way of improving the speed is to use the Readyboost technology used in Windows VISTA. However, currently there are not too many choices on the flash drives, so I need somebody's help in order to make a decision (on if I need to install VISTA on my X41).

One way of doing it is to use the SD card. However, for now the fastest SD card is about 150x, and as I test on my machine (using a 4GB 150X SD card), the read speed is about 3-4MB/s which is not very impressive, and I doubt if Readyboost using SD card will improve thing at all.

One thing we can try is to use a PCMCIA SSD (which is less expensive than replacing the whole hard drive with a 1.8" SSD), such as those products on http://www.psism.com/industrialata.htm. According to the specs, the read and write speed should be faster than the SD card, which is good. However, I am not sure if our X4x supports UDMA-4 in for PCMCIA flash drive (I only know that X4x supports UDMA in its IDE hard drive). If we can only use PIO-4 mode on PCMCIA flash drive, then I also won't think this will help a lot since the system will hardly response when accessing this flash drive using PIO-4.

One thing we can also try is this: http://www.delkin.com/cardbus/ and a fast CF card. This is a sort of hand-made SSDs. One good thing about using this is that the fastest read and write speed of certain CF card is (probably 2 times) faster than the fastest SD, but we also have to make sure that if X4x's PCMCIA/cardbus supports UDMA-4.

There are also ExpressCard models of SSD which we can consider to use. However this requires an PCMCIA to ExpressCard adaptor which probably makes thing worse. However, it looks like a ExpressCard SSDs is much less expensive (compared to the PCMCIA SSDs), so it is worth trying.

In a nut shell, my problem is on if we can really benefit from using a PCMCIA SSD, that should rely on if X4x system supports UDMA in its PCMCIA/cardbus. This is the problem I wanna know the answer. If so, then I will certainly install VISTA on my X41 and give it a try.

By the way, I didn't mention the possibility of using a USB flash drive. I don't wanna have something which can not be "built-in" into my machine, so I don't consider that at all. However, if somebody had experiences using a USB flash drive to enable Readyboost, please share your experience as well. Thanks for sharing in advance.

#2 Post by **tomh009** » Thu May 10, 2007 5:15 pm

SD card speed isn't the issue, X4x SD car reader speed is. If you want performance, get a Delkin CardBus CF or Panasonic CardBus SD card adapter. It's a huge performance improvement -- 11.5 MB/s for CF or 13 MB/s for SD.

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_ ... =6007-8462

cchsiao · #3 Post by **cchsiao** » Thu May 10, 2007 7:59 pm

Except for the price issue, what is the advantage of using a CF/SD adaptor with a fast CF/SD card? Why is the PCMCIA/cardbus SSD so expensive? I assume that there might still be some difference between the performance, but I am not sure.

#4 Post by **tomh009** » Fri May 11, 2007 2:39 am

There are no independent SSD reviews yet so I take the specs with a grain of salt. Real-world performance rarely matches specs but we'll have to wait and see how close it is in this case.

The CardBus solution is much less expensive but limited in size. For ReadyBoost I think that's OK -- as long as you are not expecting to completely replace your 1.8" disk.

billp117 · #5 Post by **billp117** » Fri May 11, 2007 5:19 pm

I have tried many solutions for Readyboost and quite frankly have found none of them to be satisfatory. Readyboost is over rated and will only provide an "almost" improvement. I have tried one and two GB USB drives, CF and SD cards with no really big difference.

I have also found that the Vista operating system may not always remain stable with a Readyboost drive plugged in. I have tried it on three computers and have removed the memory device from all three.

Save your $$ and time as it will ultimately not give you much of a benefit. Sorry to burst your bubble...but that is my 2 cents on Readyboost. Others may or may not share my opinion.

cchsiao · #6 Post by **cchsiao** » Sat May 12, 2007 9:17 am

The problem is this: the hard drive on your Z61m and X30 are a lot faster than those used in X4x. So even though you cannot feel the difference using Readyboost, we might! I'd like to give it a try if I can make sure that my little X41 can use something I mentioned above. I don't mind being some while mouse (I don't know exactly the word in English) at this stage, since I love my X41 except it's slow hard drive.

seneca · #7 Post by **seneca** » Sun May 13, 2007 7:46 am

Vista is going to be horrible if you have less then 2gb ram and a 5400rpm+ hdd.

I installed Vista ultimate on my lappy (X40), but it was barely usable. The hdd never stopped glowing, probably to "cache" some programs or whatever. So I put in one of my left over 256mb SD cards I had laying around, and I felt no difference. I tried it for over a week, then I gave up.

And I've tried vista business edition on one of the newest ultra portables from fujitsu. 1gb mem, 1.2ghz core solo GMA900.
And even that was barely usable, sure, aero worked, but who needs it? 2Gb mem is the Minimum for vista.

I now run XP ( a clean install ), and it's 5 times faster and I have longer battery life.

#8 Post by **tomh009** » Sun May 13, 2007 4:01 pm

I have never run Vista on an X4 ThinkPad, but I have seen it running on multiple 1 GB systems, and I certainly wouldn't call it "horrible". But compensating for the 4200 rpm drive in the X4 will certainly require some additional performance from other parts of the system.

cchsiao · #9 Post by **cchsiao** » Sun May 13, 2007 6:22 pm

seneca wrote:Vista is going to be horrible if you have less then 2gb ram and a 5400rpm+ hdd.

I guess the RAM requirement is true, since my desktop has 2GB RAM but still asks for more RAM sometimes. However, with Readyboost, a 5400rpm HDD will be faster than a 7200rpm HDD without Readyboost. I cannot find the test "report" (it's not a report actually, probably a memo is better) by someone now, but I read this kind of statement several days ago. That's why I wanna try.

By the way, I also upgrade my X41 to 2GB (by adding a 2GB RAM into the RAM slot). So RAM wouldn't be an issue for now.

seneca wrote: I installed Vista ultimate on my lappy (X40), but it was barely usable. The hdd never stopped glowing, probably to "cache" some programs or whatever. So I put in one of my left over 256mb SD cards I had laying around, and I felt no difference. I tried it for over a week, then I gave up.

As mentioned by tomh009, the built-in SD reader is useless in Readyboost. If you plug-in your SD card into the built-in SD reader, I guess you won't see the difference. However, since I haven't tried one using a faster PCMCIA adaptor, I can't say Readyboost is useful for X4x either.

seneca wrote: And I've tried vista business edition on one of the newest ultra portables from fujitsu. 1gb mem, 1.2ghz core solo GMA900.
And even that was barely usable, sure, aero worked, but who needs it? 2Gb mem is the Minimum for vista.

If VISTA runs faster than XP (using Readyboost) in X41, I won't even turn on aero since the only reason for using VISTA is to use Readyboost.

Grey Area · #10 Post by **Grey Area** » Sun May 13, 2007 8:07 pm

cchsiao wrote: By the way, I also upgrade my X41 to 2GB (by adding a 2GB RAM into the RAM slot). So RAM wouldn't be an issue for now.

Does that work? When I bought my X41 the maximum was stated to be 1.5GB (0.5 built-in + 1GB added into the slot), but there may not have been any 2GB sticks available at that time.

Björn

cchsiao · #11 Post by **cchsiao** » Sun May 13, 2007 11:11 pm

Grey Area wrote: Does that work? When I bought my X41 the maximum was stated to be 1.5GB (0.5 built-in + 1GB added into the slot), but there may not have been any 2GB sticks available at that time.
Björn

I added a 2GB stick in the extra RAM slot, and the BIOS shows 2047KB (instead of 2.5GB), as well as the information from XP. So I guess it works, at least it didn't give me any blue screen after I added that RAM.

Grey Area · #12 Post by **Grey Area** » Mon May 14, 2007 1:09 am

cchsiao wrote: I added a 2GB stick in the extra RAM slot, and the BIOS shows 2047KB (instead of 2.5GB), as well as the information from XP. So I guess it works, at least it didn't give me any blue screen after I added that RAM.

Thanks, that is quite interesting, I can always use more RAM. Not sure if replacing my 1GB stick with a 2GB would be worth it for an upgrade of 512MB, but I will have to keep this in mind should I encounter a good deal for 2GB sticks.

Björn

nutjobox · #13 Post by **nutjobox** » Mon May 21, 2007 3:50 pm

seneca wrote:Vista is going to be horrible if you have less then 2gb ram and a 5400rpm+ hdd.

I installed Vista ultimate on my lappy (X40), but it was barely usable. The hdd never stopped glowing, probably to "cache" some programs or whatever. So I put in one of my left over 256mb SD cards I had laying around, and I felt no difference. I tried it for over a week, then I gave up.

And I've tried vista business edition on one of the newest ultra portables from fujitsu. 1gb mem, 1.2ghz core solo GMA900.
And even that was barely usable, sure, aero worked, but who needs it? 2Gb mem is the Minimum for vista.

I now run XP ( a clean install ), and it's 5 times faster and I have longer battery life.

not sure why you got that experience. i just put vista home premium on a p4 2.4ghz system with 1gb ram and a 850xt card. runs awesome even with aero. the memory isnt as much of an issue with it as the cpu is, the p4's are slow! but for the most part i run media center, orb and music without any performance issues at all....

and of course XP is faster on a clean install. it just throws itself on the disk and from that moment on it starts deteriorating itself from the inside out. clogging up the registry, fraggin the harddrive without any defraggin, not remembering [censored]..... with vista, it gets faster faster and faster as the days go on and it learns your habits. the two OS's shouldn't even be compared, they look and seem the same at first but vista is better in [censored] near every way. i dont care what any hater says, vista is MUCH faster then xp. much much much faster, just give it a month or two to work itself into a groove, it will smoke the socks off XP even fresh installed instances.

mattbiernat · #14 Post by **mattbiernat** » Sat Jul 28, 2007 8:35 pm

seneca wrote:Vista is going to be horrible if you have less then 2gb ram and a 5400rpm+ hdd.

512mb ram and 5400 rmp hd. Vista works fine.

Some thought about Readyboost

Some thought about Readyboost

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