Readyboost via SDHC card in X60

[Ken Fox]

I have an X60 1.8ghz coreduo (T2400) with 3gb of RAM running Vista SP1. I have already read basically everything I could find on these forums plus through googling about Vista Readyboost, so please don't refer me to other threads here and other (old) articles. Almost everything I have found is at least 6 to 12 months old and either not relevant or not useful.

The summary statement on what I have read so far would indicate that Readyboost may be of some value for systems with limited RAM. Some users have observed that Readyboost gives them a "more responsive" system by observation but not in ways that can be documented.

I just got a new 8gb Class 6 SDHC card ($31, delivered!) for my X60. On putting it into the SD card slot on the machine, I was offered the option to use some of it for Readyboost, which I accepted up to what was recommended, 4gb. At the moment I only have about 1gb of other stuff on this SDHC card, but when I begin an international trip soon I expect to use more of the storage. I did not buy this card specifically to use it for Readyboost, but I could devote some portion of the room on this card on a permanent basis if there was a real benefit.

My very limited observations at this point are that boot up and shut down seem to take longer with the card in the slot being used for Readyboost. I haven't used the system enough to tell if there has been any change in speed otherwise.

Vista offers native SDHC card functionality in the X60's SD card slot (and XP offers this also, now, via newer drivers, although of course, not Readyboost). Even with this, the card reader in this system is not the speediest way to transfer data from an SD or SDHC card.

What I was hoping to find out was if there are other forum members who have experience with this same situation, i.e. a fast SDHC card in this slot on an X60 with part of it being used for Readyboost, and if they have observed any real benefit?

Thanks for any useful information.

[jdigitL]

i personally havent noticed anything that i would benefit from. in fact, using an sd card makes my system unresponsive and unstable when its being used with readyboost.

as far as other aspects of performance, you can format the card for better performance with fat with a lower cluster size, depending on what you are storing on your card...

jd

[jketzetera]

It is my impression that the built in SD-card reader in the X6x models is very poor. Using a cheapo USB SD-card reader, I get twice the read/write speed than using the internal SD-card reader.