Vista Tutorial - Memorex 4GB travelmate incompatible with ReadyBoost

Just in case anyone else feels like taking advantage of the sale at staples
for the Memorex 4GB travelmate usb flash drive to use for ReadyBoost. Don't
bother, it isn't compatible.

It's still a good price at $54.00 if you have a need for a 4GB flash drive
but according to vista it's too slow to use for readyboost unfortunately.

Lakesidezx wrote:
> Just in case anyone else feels like taking advantage of the sale at
> staples for the Memorex 4GB travelmate usb flash drive to use for
> ReadyBoost. Don't bother, it isn't compatible.
>
> It's still a good price at $54.00 if you have a need for a 4GB flash
> drive but according to vista it's too slow to use for readyboost
> unfortunately.
>
>
Nice to know. I noted their ad in today's paper and was headed there to
get the 2GB model expressly for ReadyBoost use. Memorex makes crappy
recordable media' I guess the same is true of their thumb drives.
Where I live, there's a chain called Inkstop that has a Lexar 2GB drive
advertised for $30, so I might try that.

BTW, from what I read, unless you have more than 2 GB of RAM, there's no
use getting a ReadyBoost thumb drive that's larger than 2GB. Newegg has
a number of thumb drives that claim to be "ReadyBoost compatible," but
none is inexpensive.

The buffallo 2GB in Tesco works well as soon as you plug it on. It is sale
£29 or £35 full price!

B
"Ron Miller" <millerDOT90@osu.edu> wrote in message
news:OyRerjNSHHA.1200@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> Lakesidezx wrote:
>> Just in case anyone else feels like taking advantage of the sale at
>> staples for the Memorex 4GB travelmate usb flash drive to use for
>> ReadyBoost. Don't bother, it isn't compatible.
>>
>> It's still a good price at $54.00 if you have a need for a 4GB flash
>> drive but according to vista it's too slow to use for readyboost
>> unfortunately.
>>
>>
> Nice to know. I noted their ad in today's paper and was headed there to
> get the 2GB model expressly for ReadyBoost use. Memorex makes crappy
> recordable media' I guess the same is true of their thumb drives.
> Where I live, there's a chain called Inkstop that has a Lexar 2GB drive
> advertised for $30, so I might try that.
>
> BTW, from what I read, unless you have more than 2 GB of RAM, there's no
> use getting a ReadyBoost thumb drive that's larger than 2GB. Newegg has a
> number of thumb drives that claim to be "ReadyBoost compatible," but none
> is inexpensive.

I have 3GB in my computer thats why I opted for the 4GB model, but I may
remove 1GB of memory out of my computer since it's mismatched. I have two
1GB sticks of memory and two 512MB sticks of memory that I had left over
from a friends computer rebuild, so I stuck them in, but I'll probably
remove them since they are mismatched and I think slightly slower than my
two 1GB sticks of memory. In which case I'd probably benefit from just a
2GB USB flash device instead of the 4GB which Im going to try to return
today since I have no reason to keep a USB flash thumb device in my
household.


"Ron Miller" <millerDOT90@osu.edu> wrote in message
news:OyRerjNSHHA.1200@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> Lakesidezx wrote:
>> Just in case anyone else feels like taking advantage of the sale at
>> staples for the Memorex 4GB travelmate usb flash drive to use for
>> ReadyBoost. Don't bother, it isn't compatible.
>>
>> It's still a good price at $54.00 if you have a need for a 4GB flash
>> drive but according to vista it's too slow to use for readyboost
>> unfortunately.
>>
>>
> Nice to know. I noted their ad in today's paper and was headed there to
> get the 2GB model expressly for ReadyBoost use. Memorex makes crappy
> recordable media' I guess the same is true of their thumb drives.
> Where I live, there's a chain called Inkstop that has a Lexar 2GB drive
> advertised for $30, so I might try that.
>
> BTW, from what I read, unless you have more than 2 GB of RAM, there's no
> use getting a ReadyBoost thumb drive that's larger than 2GB. Newegg has a
> number of thumb drives that claim to be "ReadyBoost compatible," but none
> is inexpensive.

And I forgot to mention that I have the PNY attache 1GB thumb drive and it
works with readyboost but I dont think I actually benefit anything from it
since it's only 1/3rd of the total amount of ram that I have in my computer.


"Lakesidezx" <lakesidezx@nowhere.net> wrote in message
news:322B24B6-96BE-4F5D-BDAB-4B7CCB111879@microsoft.com...
> Just in case anyone else feels like taking advantage of the sale at
> staples for the Memorex 4GB travelmate usb flash drive to use for
> ReadyBoost. Don't bother, it isn't compatible.
>
> It's still a good price at $54.00 if you have a need for a 4GB flash drive
> but according to vista it's too slow to use for readyboost unfortunately.
>
>

Lakesidezx wrote:
> And I forgot to mention that I have the PNY attache 1GB thumb drive and
> it works with readyboost but I dont think I actually benefit anything
> from it since it's only 1/3rd of the total amount of ram that I have in
> my computer.

ReadyBoost is probably most useful in laptops where it can prevent some
disk thrashing which, in turn, prolongs battery life. The increase in
performance in a desktop would be harder to discern, but it's certainly
there, even if it's only 1/3 of total memory. The more important
comparison would seem to be to the size of your swap file -- i.e., what
percentage of the swap file could be mirrored to the thumb drive and
therefore avoid the head-seek delay inherent in picking bits and bytes
from the swap file on the HD.

Lakesidezx wrote:
> Just in case anyone else feels like taking advantage of the sale at
> staples for the Memorex 4GB travelmate usb flash drive to use for
> ReadyBoost. Don't bother, it isn't compatible.
>
> It's still a good price at $54.00 if you have a need for a 4GB flash
> drive but according to vista it's too slow to use for readyboost
> unfortunately.
>
>
I had the same problem with a PNY 2gb. It constantly failed the test.
I ran across another post and someone mentioned it could be a problem
with the drives format. I reformated my PNY 2gb and it passed the test
and is now being used for ready boost. Just thought I'd pass it along.

I too ran across some posts about how this Memorex travel drive worked and
how they formatted it to NTFS and 16kb, so I tried that, as well as many
other possibilities but just couldn't get it to work.

I have a strong suspicion that this feature is bugged in vista and how it
detects. Because what works for one should surely work for another, meaning
that if someone formats the travel drive to NTFS and 16kb then that should
also work for someone else.

But I've also found that the PNY 4GB Attache drive that I bought today was
being reported as not compatible, but in the end it turned out that it was
compatible (I have another post here about it so I'll just quote myself
below):
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Okay, after vista reported that my Memorex traveldrive (4GB) is
incompatible, I just returned it to the store and bought a PNY 4(GB) attache
device.

Vista reported this as incompatible for ReadyBoost.
But heres what I noted.....

I went into windows explorer and right clicked on the USB PNY device and
chose the readyboost tab, then test again, each time it failed the test, but
what I noted was that the screen behind the properties screen (the windows
explorer screen) was writing a .tmp file to the "H" hard drive, which is a
physical hard drive on my system and the PNY device is listed at location
G:\

So what was happening is that windows for some unknown reason seemed to be
writing it's temp testing file to one of my physical hard drives instead of
the actual usb flash device.

The work around for myself was to make sure that I had highlighted the G:\
(PNY USB flash device) AND then right click on it and choose properties then
the readyboost tab then test again and sure enough it is compatible.

This makes me think that *perhaps* the same thing was happening with the
Memorex traveldrive as well that I returned to the store, but I can't be
certain since I already returned it.

Just an FYI for anyone else that has a problem with the PNY 4GB attache
flash device.




"Bret Butcher" <bretbb@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:OMKhJzZSHHA.480@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> Lakesidezx wrote:
>> Just in case anyone else feels like taking advantage of the sale at
>> staples for the Memorex 4GB travelmate usb flash drive to use for
>> ReadyBoost. Don't bother, it isn't compatible.
>>
>> It's still a good price at $54.00 if you have a need for a 4GB flash
>> drive but according to vista it's too slow to use for readyboost
>> unfortunately.
>>
>>
> I had the same problem with a PNY 2gb. It constantly failed the test.
> I ran across another post and someone mentioned it could be a problem
> with the drives format. I reformated my PNY 2gb and it passed the test
> and is now being used for ready boost. Just thought I'd pass it along.

One other work-around is to go to the properties and set it to optimize for
performance - worked on my generic 2gb micro-center drive.

"Lakesidezx" <lakesidezx@nowhere.net> wrote in message
news:737BC2A5-628F-42C9-A437-7C9921E56AFA@microsoft.com...
>I too ran across some posts about how this Memorex travel drive worked and
>how they formatted it to NTFS and 16kb, so I tried that, as well as many
>other possibilities but just couldn't get it to work.
>
> I have a strong suspicion that this feature is bugged in vista and how it
> detects. Because what works for one should surely work for another,
> meaning that if someone formats the travel drive to NTFS and 16kb then
> that should also work for someone else.
>
> But I've also found that the PNY 4GB Attache drive that I bought today was
> being reported as not compatible, but in the end it turned out that it was
> compatible (I have another post here about it so I'll just quote myself
> below):
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Okay, after vista reported that my Memorex traveldrive (4GB) is
> incompatible, I just returned it to the store and bought a PNY 4(GB)
> attache
> device.
>
> Vista reported this as incompatible for ReadyBoost.
> But heres what I noted.....
>
> I went into windows explorer and right clicked on the USB PNY device and
> chose the readyboost tab, then test again, each time it failed the test,
> but
> what I noted was that the screen behind the properties screen (the windows
> explorer screen) was writing a .tmp file to the "H" hard drive, which is a
> physical hard drive on my system and the PNY device is listed at location
> G:\
>
> So what was happening is that windows for some unknown reason seemed to be
> writing it's temp testing file to one of my physical hard drives instead
> of
> the actual usb flash device.
>
> The work around for myself was to make sure that I had highlighted the G:\
> (PNY USB flash device) AND then right click on it and choose properties
> then
> the readyboost tab then test again and sure enough it is compatible.
>
> This makes me think that *perhaps* the same thing was happening with the
> Memorex traveldrive as well that I returned to the store, but I can't be
> certain since I already returned it.
>
> Just an FYI for anyone else that has a problem with the PNY 4GB attache
> flash device.
>
>
>
>
> "Bret Butcher" <bretbb@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:OMKhJzZSHHA.480@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
>> Lakesidezx wrote:
>>> Just in case anyone else feels like taking advantage of the sale at
>>> staples for the Memorex 4GB travelmate usb flash drive to use for
>>> ReadyBoost. Don't bother, it isn't compatible.
>>>
>>> It's still a good price at $54.00 if you have a need for a 4GB flash
>>> drive but according to vista it's too slow to use for readyboost
>>> unfortunately.
>>>
>>>
>> I had the same problem with a PNY 2gb. It constantly failed the test.
>> I ran across another post and someone mentioned it could be a problem
>> with the drives format. I reformated my PNY 2gb and it passed the test
>> and is now being used for ready boost. Just thought I'd pass it along.
>

Keith wrote:
> One other work-around is to go to the properties and set it to optimize
> for performance - worked on my generic 2gb micro-center drive.

Go to "properties" of what? The only place I can recall a choice like
that is in Display properties.


snip