Tips for AAO with HDD in Windows 7

I've just tested an awesome method of accelerating Windows 7's responsivness. This method requires a fast SD/SDHC card to be used.

You'll need an SD card with 20MB/s read speed or above to achieve optimum results.
You'll need to purchase a copy of eboostr 3 fully utilize the SDcard caching or else eboostr trial will work 4 hours everything you turn on your computer.

Basically, set your SDcard up as readyboost drive equal or greater to half of your ram. Readyboost uses compresion thus achieving more than 50% compression. This will speed up the access time of small page files by a considerable amount. It'll also increase your battery life a bit due to less hdd activity.

Then install eboostr 3. Setup as large of a cache size as possible up to 4GB. For cache size over 4GB, you'll need to use NTFS file system. 4GB is more than enough for majority of user's needs. Go to eboostr control panel and configure the "application priority". Drag all frequently used appliction to the priority list. Build the cache file then the caching process is done.

What i've done:
readyboost: 1.25GB
eboostr cache: 768MB
Programs installed: adobe master collection, office suite..etc
Startup performance of apps increased probably by more than 100% (use 1/2 the time to startup).

E.g. IE8 starts almost instanously. Taskbar preview is instant. Everything becomes very smooth and performance of the OS exceeds XP by a considerable amount.

 

Thanks for the tip. I am trying it out right now and load times do seem much quicker. I'll keep you informed how things go as I continue to use it.

 

I need both readyboost AND eboostr?
Is there btw any special reasons you choosed those sizes for the caches?

I made my readyboost 1250 mb and the eboostr 1024 mb

Btw my flashdevice have a read speed of 14 mb hope its good enough

 

I have 4GB SDHC card. All of my predefined cached program takes about 700MB of space. I need 2GB for my digital camera so that leaves me with about 1.2GB of readyboost cache.

 

After setting up Eboostr to 1024 the cache fill is 100 %... Does that mean I have to make it bigger???

 

If you want to make it bigger, you can. Cache fill at 100% simply means eboostr has filled up the allocated space. If you have set the priority thing that I mentioned, eboostr will allocate the space to those programs first before allocating space for everything else. Allocating more space will increase your system performance, but you'll have to draw the line where the extra space doesn't make ay more performance gain.

 

I tried setting the space up to 1.250 and it was still 100% :S I set the priorety from used program off and its still 100% apparently my system uses alot cache? :S

I'm trying to set the cache up to 4 gb now and see if its still 100%

EDIT: ok so I tried this setup: Eboostr: 4095 mb and Readyboots: 0

Now the cache fill is 31 %... That is the answer to whole this riddle

31 % of 4095 is 1269,45
So that is why the cache fill was 100% all the time
Looks like an optimal cache size is 1500 mb Eboost perhaps and 1000 to readyboost?

IS there now way to make the cache start at 0% again?
Even after a format and removing it from eboostr, after adding it again the cache fill directly jumps to the 1250 mb...

EDIT2: Now my computer begin to pop up with random bluescreens

 

Did you safely remove the SD card before you take it out of the netbook? That will sometimes cause corruption on the SD card and cause BSOD. Also, eboostr 3 isn't officially supported in windows 7 so there might be incompatibilities somewhere. I have had 2 BSOD so far, both caused by eboostr according to the information on the BSOD.

 

ok eBoostr3 was a awesome fine I can not begin to thankyou enough for posting about it. I have a 4GB 133X SD Card I configured it for 1GB Readyboost and ~3GB for eBoostr3 added all my applications Office 2007 suite, Adobe, etc built the cache and wow is all I can say I see like 150% performance boost.

Just keep in mind you need to open the applications a few times after you have added them to the priority list and then rebuild the cache so eBoostr3 knows which files to build a cache off

Again thank you for posting this!

 

Wow!! What a great application! I have it installed now, and even though my HD is pretty fast, it has really improved things. Thanks for a great tip!

 

My queston is about NTFS vs Fat
Would a 4 gig Fat SD card be faster then a 6 or 8 gig NTFS card?

Good test would be test 4gig fat vs 4gig NTFS

 

For SD cards lower than 4GB and you don't use the SD card for other purpose like digital cameras..etc, use exFat. It's far more superior to NTFS and Fat32/Fat16/Fat. BTW.. Fat is limited to 2GB i believe.

For the best compatibility, use Fat32, but that limits readyboost and eboostr cache to 4GB at the most.

I suggest you not using NTFS because it's not really designed for SSDs/Flash storage and for other reasons.

 

Which version of the eboostr would be best suitable for the AAO netbooks?

i plan to pay for one.. but there's too many options! hehe.

 

lite version is fine.

 

It's worth noting that the download page does say that Windows 7 RC is a supported platform now (I can't say how long it has).

Not meant to be my first post, but noticed it as I was researching around before upgrading my AA1.
Simon

 

I'm just looking at trying this out and have a couple of quick questions about the choice of SD card - if anybody's had the experience...

Would you notice (or would the AAO make use of) a 30mb/s card for this scenario?

Would 4gb be enough, or would you get more out of 8 (bearing in mind that I don't yet drive my AAO that hard).

Because of the prices, I'm currently weighing up a 4gb SDHC card with 30mb/s transfer against an 8gb SDHC card with 20mb/s transfer. I'm erriing on the side of speed over capactiy, but there's no point if the AAO won't benefit (or indeed if I'd fill the card with ReadyBoost and ebbostr...

Thanks guys, Simon

 

i wonder if a class 6 SDHC would be enough? class 6 seems to be the fastest card currently with a max of 20MB/s

 

I've been looking into this, and the class system seems a bit vague for these requirements. Class 6 appears (to me) to be anything from 6mb/s upwards. Therefore, you can pick up a class 6 4gb card for about £7.50, but for these purposes it would be too slow. I've been looking at the Sandisk Extreme III cards. Standard seems to be 20mb/s, but with a 30mb/s version available (for about £25 is the cheapest I've seen).

 

Well... I used to use a standard generic 1GB sd card that can only do 1MB/s transfer rate. It still gave me significant boost with eboostr.

Class6 sd card is any card that has 6mb/s read speed.

I got 4GB class 6 adata card that can get around 22MB/s read speed for $6 from NCIX.