I am getting mixed answers on google. This is what my idea of readyboost is:
Windows logs your most used files/apps.
They make a mirror of these files on the flash drive
Whenever you are opening the app or file, some of it is loaded into ram from the flash drive and some of it is loaded from the hdd.
Another question I have is that is pagefiling also stored on the readyboost flash drive and does that see a bigger performance gain?
Also is it caching constantly (I dont want to wear out the lifespan of mu flashdrive)
And just to make sure: Windows does not use my flash drive as addition ram, it uses it for caching.
Best Answer
You are confusing SuperFetch with ReadyBoost. Here is a good article explaining SuperFetch.
ReadyBoost is different. ReadyBoost uses SuperFetch technology to cache files to flash media for faster reads times. Does it increase performance? Yes, however it is only noticeable in low memory systems. Modern computers have more than enough RAM and fast disks, that there is little benefit from using a ReadyBoost dedicated disk.
However, if you have a spare old flash drive lying around (most people computer people do) that will support ReadyBoost, then there is no reason not to put it in a spare USB port. The benefits will be minuscule, but what else would you do with a spare drive? I have an old 512MB flash drive on my machine running ReadyBoost. Using PerfMon I can see it gets the occasional ReadyBoost cache hit, so I know its working, even though its really not doing much of anything.
I would not put a pagefile on a ReadyBoost drive. ReadyBoost should only be allowable on removable flash media, such as USB thumb drives. If your pagefile is on one of these drives, then your performance will be degraded by the bottleneck of the USB bus. However, an internal SSD is a great place to put your pagefile. Microsoft even recommends this.
As for wearing out your drive... This is a technical pet peeve of mine... I just dont understand people's fear of this. You bought the drive to use. If you are afraid of wearing it out, then you shouldnt have bought it. Its the "we dont use the guest towels" syndrome.
Finally, you are correct. Windows does not use your flash drive as RAM. Caching is a more efficient use of flash media, since it is nowhere near as fast as RAM. Although you technically could do this with RAM disk software, it would actually degrade your system's performace.