engadget.com — InnoDisk looks to have come up with a solution for those looking for a little ReadyBoost action in Vista but not willing to give up a USB port for the pleasure, announcing a drive that bypasses the popular port and goes straight to the motherboard. Apparently available in 2GB and 4GB versions (with the former running only $15).
Apr 4, 2007 View in Crawl 4
stucktildekeyApr 5, 2007
"That whole 127 devices per channel thing really annoyed me because no manufacturer adds a female plug to let you daisychain USB gadgets together. That should have been a mandatory part of the standard."It's more of a power issue than anything. That's why USB splitters require external power the majority of the time. Not to mention, I doubt anyone has the case realestate for 127 USB ports.
ozziegtApr 5, 2007
OK, yeah I see that now. Well in that case people who are comparing this to RAM are just a bunch of numnuts...
ecclesApr 5, 2007
Couldn't this also reduce idle time power consumption if you're running something like folding@home, allowing the hard drives to sleep?
ecclesApr 5, 2007
If used smartly, this should also help speed up boot/wake-from-hibernation times, because the flash memory is nonvolatile.
topher06Apr 5, 2007
Microsoft is making the reasonable assumption that flash memory will get faster, it really depends on how fast your flash memory is. USB has the potential bandwidth to exceed most desktop hard drives, and because flash memory doesn't suffer from differences in performance depending on where the data is stored (unlike hard drives which has significant performance differences across the platter) accessing application content from a flash drive is more optimal then from a hard drive.This is a new feature and yes most current flash drives don't have the performance necessary to make ReadyBoost offer a significant improvement. I have yet to find one that actually can be used with ReadyBoost because its bandwidth and space isn't accepted by VIsta. When flash cards started having 100+mb/s access you will see performance improvements.
twangoApr 5, 2007
What team of geniuses came up with a name like "readyboost"?
invidApr 5, 2007
Unfortunately Topher06, USB2 has a theoretical maximum of 60MB/s (480Mbps) which it can never achieve due to signaling overhead. Even if you could somehow manufacture a 100MB/s flash drive, it would be constrained by the USB interface. The flash drives that you see appearing in notebooks are on the SATA bus, which Readyboost can't leverage. BTW the flashdrive I used was a 2GB USB2 device.One last tidbit...flash drives excel in random access, not sequential reads. Any decent, modern 7200rpm HDD will trounce flash in large sequential read throughput, though as you mentioned, performance is highly variable across the span of the platter.
faizoroMay 8, 2007
InnoDisk uses (if available) internal mobo usb header pins.Design is ideal. Beware- though this device does meet the requirements for speedboost, it is "not a speed demon". Questions: 1. Are laptops likely to have available such header pins- if so is this thing going to fit? (I think not) 2. If dual booting say Ubuntu, any benefit/bugs?Also concerning those who are talking about 'wasting usb header pins' or however you would prefer to express the notion: um- my mom and most people would have no idea about exploiting those pins in any other respect if they are not already in use. Clearly if there is some other dire-need for the header pins you should not use this device- but if you have pins to spare and don't need additional USB connectors man this is a good idea. Something tells me most of the people geeky enough to understand 1. what this is for and 2. how to install it are also reasonably capable of figguring out whether they are going to run into a "not enough header pins crisis- O what shall I do- Harikari or hemlock?" crisis. Call me crazy.