Virtual Memory

[aintnothang]

I have THIS (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815108012) card and someone said that the "internal port for connecting other usb lines to but I put a 4 GB USB drive on it and put that as my virtual memory. Computer runs faster now." I was just wondering how to do this and will it really run any faster?

[J-Roc]

I think it depends more on how much ram you have installed. You will notice it more on a system with less ram. You might not even notice it if you have more than 2-3 Gb installed.

Virtual memory resides on your hard drive normally. So by putting it on a thumb drive, the computer no longer has to wait the 8.2ms seek times(average) from the hard drive. However if im not mistaken, thumb drives have horrible write times.

There is only one way to find out. Open your system properties from the control panel and go to the advanced tab. Click the performance settings button and move to the advanced tab. Now click the change button to open the virtual ram window. Change the settings and click the set button (important) and then you can close it down. Restart.

[aintnothang]

Yeah, I have 1 gb installed but my flash drive has terrible write speeds so it sounds like a no go. Thanks for the reply.

[Eclecticos]

Virtual Memory on a Flash drive? So what happens when you remove it?
Sound like a bad idea if you ask me.

[J-Roc]

I dont think anything would happen. Untill you need the virtual ram. Then you'll get a pop up stating that windows is running out of virtual memory and needs an ok to get more.

Another solution and the recomended prefrence is to put the virtual ram on a secondary physical drive, not the one windows is installed on.

[crenn]

ReadyBoost is a good way to have lower latencies (I've used it on slow laptops... yay for Vista!) and if you remove the flash drive, it just switches back to the HDD.
Please don't kill me for celebrating a Vista feature
But if you're using XP, then if it's soldered onto the circuit board and is not removable, then it's fine. For the record, Flash drives with write speeds of 20MB/s have been seen, it's better to get a CF-SATA adapter and a 4GB CF card to do it.