Using a USB drive as system memory.

[Loose rivets]

I just got some vague information about expanding my meager 2gigs with a solid state USB drive. Can the team advise me just what this entails?

Does one need a special, or particularly fast unit? Thought I'd ask, before opening a cheap 2gig PNY drive.

I'm assuming USB 2.

I accept that it won't equal the speed of a wide-bus stick. How can two disparate speeds live together?

Does one have to format it? - I'm assuming yes.

I gather that one goes to Properties to 'order' its configuration...but looking at an un-formatted one, the option is not offered.

[Bushfiva]

You're talking about ReadyBoost on Vista and above. If you plug in a compatble USB stick, one of the autoplay options will be to use the stick as ReadyBoost. It's a cache, not an increase in RAM.

[Saab Dastard]

It's a moot point whether there's any speed gain using an SSD externally for readyboost vs. just putting it into the system and using it for the pagefile.

SD

[SyllogismCheck]

Forgive the slight tangent, but I'm curious. What's puny about 2 gigs?

For no reason other than big numbers seeming better, I've been meaning to upgrade this machine from the factory supplied 512MB since I got it in 2004, but simply haven't seen the need since as soon as I click, it immediately does.

Is there something else more memory will do which I don't know about and am missing out on? :confused:

[Bushfiva]

For very, very many people 2GB is fine. If 512 kB works fine for you, I'd leave it at that.

Readyboost caches only random writes. Sequential writes are made to the existing paging file because most HDDs do faster sequential writes than most flash devices. The OS tests a flash device before offering the ReadyBoost option. ReadyBoost offers more apparent benefit on systems with smaller amounts of memory.