What SD Card is the Best for readyboost/eboostr

Hi,
Im interested in getting an SD card for my expansion slot in vista and just wondered if anyone could recommend size/type for the use with readyboost/eboostr?
Also which of the two programs is better to use? readyboost or eboostr....im assuming that they are pretty similar things just one comes as standard in vista?
Help would be much appreciated Cheers

 

readyboost is better than eboostr.

The best SD/SDHC card to use on AAO is a SD card which as 2GB+ free space, 25+MB/s throughput with 4KB block.

These kind of card are much faster than generic SDHC class 6. If they have their own standard, these card should be around SDHC class 25- 30. Look online review for fast SDHC card. I know sandisk extreme II is one of those fast SD cards.

 

I try to use Kingston for everything memory/media as much as possible. There's something to be said for having it "just work." I am currently using a Kingston 2GB MicroSDHC card in a full size SD jacket, formatted NTFS with 4k blocks, and giving the recommended 1840MB to Vista for ReadyBoost. This is using the left side SD card slot, and I plan to keep it there . I don't know if it helps or not to be honest, but I wasn't doing anything else with the card.

 

If you don't notice the differnce readyboost make, the you're either
1) don't know what readyboost does thus can't identify where speed have improved
2) have slow flash memory
3)improperly setupped cache
4)you don't have anything stored or installed on your computer that windows can speed up with readyboost
5) You have a fast SSD in your computer

 

Have you tried testing with internet explorer? With eboostr on my AAO (Western Digital 160GB hdd) internet explorer 7 starts instantly and loads google in half a second (webpage loading speed depends on your internet connection).
Without eboostr and the SD card, Internet explorer loads in about 2 seconds and loads google in 1 second.
So far, internet explorer received a nice 200%+ speed boost on my AAO with eboostr enabled.

The aao used to lag when I have adobe photoshop, adobe premere, adobe encore all opened up at the same time using around 1.2gb of ram + pagefile. After enabling eboostr, it doesn't lag anymore. Switching between program is much more smoother.

 

cool guys cheers for the help there last question though.....what is the 4kb block? lol is this something you choose yourself on the sdhc's formatting?

 

For example: a 2gb sd card is formatted in fat16 mode with 32kb block (mandatory). If you store a file that's 1kb, the computer will use 32kb to store the information on the harddrive. If you store a file that's 33kb, the computer will use 2 x 32kb of space to store your file.

 

Yea i get u now... so basically the smaller the block (eg 4kb as aposed to 32kb) the more efficient the card is at storing smaller files? as it would use less space overall. :geek:

 

using small block size also increase the the speed which small files are transfered. E.G a 4kb file retrieved from 4kb block is couple times faster than if it was retrieved from 32kb block. Since eboostr and readyboost only stores small cache files like icon cache, 4kb block size is the ideal block size to use.

If you primarily use your flash storage to store movies..etc, use a large block to increase the throughtput.

here's my measurement for my 160gig aao hdd.
128kb blocksize gets 65MB/s transfer rate
4kb block size gets 20MB/s transfer rate
access time 15ms

2gb sd card
128kb block size 1MB/s
4kb block size 1MB/s
access time 0.1ms

As you can see, flash memory tends to be affected less by the block size so flash access smaller file much faster than HDD can. Since the access time is lower on the SD card, the computer can access data "faster". The HDD takes 150x longer to access a specific data. Eboostr and readyboost uses this advantage to "speed up" your computer. Things such as displaying icons, switching between windows, loading drivers.. etc gets a nice speed boost while saving battery power.

 

lol i wasnt expecting such an explanatory answer i understand it alot clearer now! I think i can finally sleep at night knowing that the SDHC card i just bought is going to be worth it :lol: I ended up getting the sandisk SDHC extreme III, it seemed to have all of the attributes you said to look for. Thanks alot for your help

 

ideally, you want a 1:1 ratio of IO request to IO fulfillment. The above poster is correct in his explanation on the proper block size for formatting the SD card for ReadyBoost optimization. His numbers on the hard drive though, are very telling. The transfer rates at the various clock sizes wil increase/decrease your transfer rates, but this is a moving target, as it is all based on what the size of of each IO request.

If you're watching movies from the drive, the larger the block size, the better. However, with a block size of 128kb (for instance), if your OS is seeking a 4kB file, it still has to process an IO request to get to that 4kB file. Conversely, if you has a 4kB block size, and had a 128kB file that you were trying to retrieve, it would take 32 IOPS to retrieve the file at a 4kB block size, which is not efficient at all.

As a general rule for modern desktop OS's, the larger you can set the block size to, the better. Now, all of this goes completely out the window when doing SAN implementations, specifically when it pertains to GFS, DB accessed LUNS, or CFS implementations.

 

And so by any chance is this where the readyboost software comes into play? With the SD card i guess it kinda gives u the best of both? Cheers for another good answer haha i just hope this is gonna make a difference to the aao

 

The best possible solutionw ould be one of the Intel SSD's. I believe they're called the x25, or maybe it's the M25, but they're not cheap. The next best thing would be a hybrid drive which would have onboard memory addressable to the OS as a small data cache, and next to that, the next best thing is ReadyBoost. The media is so cheap that most people (myself included) have a couple of spare cards laying around that can be used. If you have it, might as well use it.

 

So the AAO WILL read an SDHC card? What about a 4GB HC card? I want to try eboostr or readyboost as explained in these forums to gain speed by leaving it in the left SD slot. Is there a speed gain when you have a regular HDD? Mine is the 160GB Seagate. Can anyone explain how to format such a card to get the maximum gain? All the jargon about block size and etc. is confusing. If it works, or is even possible, it seems simpler than disassembling the AAO to put in the 1GB upgrade RAM chip.

 

AAO supports SDHC card up to 32GB(currently the maximum capacity SDHC card you can buy). Eboostr/readyboost is not the same thing as adding more ram. If you have a spare SDhc card that you don't use, eboostr/readyboost will be a great way to use the unsed resource.

About formating the card: you don't need to format the 4GB card. The default filesystem is already 4Kb block in fat32.
You'll only need to reformat it if you're using SD card. 2GB SD card's default filesystem is 32Kb block in Fat16.