ReadyBoost does this in Vista, but you can use a USB drive as cache memory in XP as well.
One Response to “CNET Insider Secrets: Use a flash drive as memory in Windows XP”
rmadugula
Hi Tom –
Big Fan of CNET and your posts. I had a quick question regarding this USB Flash Drive XO VM hack. How do you make sure that XP is actually using the new memory once it is installed. The Flash drive I installed has was assigned a pretty low dirive (L: or M:). Since my C: drive has a a pagefile as well, won’t XP only use the new flash drive once the C: drive pagefile is full up and the system overflows to the new drive?
I have tried to lower the C: drive pagefile to a very low level to try and force it use the flash drive memory, but that seems to cause system stability issues. Every time I check the flash drive, all the memory is fully available so the system is not caching on it. How does one know whether XP is using this new memory and boosting performance? I see posts around the ‘Net and Youtube addressing this XP “ReadyBoost” hack, so any insight on your part would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Tom –
Big Fan of CNET and your posts. I had a quick question regarding this USB Flash Drive XO VM hack. How do you make sure that XP is actually using the new memory once it is installed. The Flash drive I installed has was assigned a pretty low dirive (L: or M:). Since my C: drive has a a pagefile as well, won’t XP only use the new flash drive once the C: drive pagefile is full up and the system overflows to the new drive?
I have tried to lower the C: drive pagefile to a very low level to try and force it use the flash drive memory, but that seems to cause system stability issues. Every time I check the flash drive, all the memory is fully available so the system is not caching on it. How does one know whether XP is using this new memory and boosting performance? I see posts around the ‘Net and Youtube addressing this XP “ReadyBoost” hack, so any insight on your part would be greatly appreciated.
-Rama