Found another with 5X the write speed and the PC no longer feels like walking thro' custard.  But I still can't sense any improvement compared without ReadyBoost.

The fact that nobodyelse has posted suggests that ReadyBoost has not been widely adopted by dotTechies.

Anyway, I don't think I will continue with it, it just ties up a USB Stick.

Thanks for your interest.

According to WEI, my disc scores 5.9.  Perhaps this means that in doesn't need boosting or is not suitable. 

I've downloaded CrystalDiskMark and run it, but I need to check out your technet link to understand what parameters I should use.  I'll do this when I have an hour to spare.

Part of the reason for my original post, was that I don't understand how a relatively slow USB 2.0 device can be used to "boost" a SATA hard disk.  Does anyone have an explanation?  An USB3.0, I could believe.

BTW I rate XP, the first reasonable version of Windows since 3.1.  I only have Win 7 because I bought a new computer in June 2009 which came with Vista (diabolical!) and a free upgrade to Win 7.  When, and if you upgrade to Win 7, I don't think you will be disappointed. 

Not all USB Drives are the same speed, and for ReadyBoost to work you need a quick one.

hmmm .....

from reading http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff356869.aspx

it could be that your computer may not benefit from ReadyBoost?

(I would still recommend testing some other USB Flash Drives/Flash Memory Cards to see if they provide a benefit)

ReadyBoost provides the most significant performance improvement under the following circumstances:

* The computer has a slow hard disk drive. Computers with a primary hard disk Windows Experience Index (WEI) subscore lower than 4.0 will see the most significant improvements.
* The flash storage provides fast, random, non-sequential reads. Sequential read speed is less important.
* The flash storage is connected by a fast bus. Typically, USB memory card readers are not sufficiently fast. However, connecting flash memory to an internal memory card reader might provide sufficient performance.

Computers with fast hard disks (such as 7,200- or 10,000-RPM disks) might realize minimal performance gains because of the already high disk I/O.

maybe you could run Windows Experience Index and see what it rates your hard drive as?

info here--> http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/What-is-the-Windows-Experience-Index

and to test your USB / Flash memory to see if it "provides fast, random, non-sequential reads", something like Crystal Disk Mark (http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html) is what you're after.

good luck :-)

I have tried a 4 GB USB flash drive (on its own and together with a 2 GB SD card), but rather than a speed up, it seemed to make the system very sluggish.  Removing them definitely gave the system a speed up.

Has any one out there got any experience of ReadyBoost?  If you did get an improvement, what size did you use, and how much installed RAM do you have?

I use Win 7(64), have 4 GB of RAM and a 5757 MB pagefile in a dedicated partition.

Am I missing something or is it a Microsoft myth/con?