How to enable Readyboost that is disabled in error

Readyboost is also useful for people working in Digital Forensics & Incident Response (like myself) as it provides information around USB sticks that can be useful. As such I have found this problem when working on Virtual Machines, and I don;t even have an SSD!

I looked for a long time and like you got no real useful answers, usually people saying to start the Superprefetch service (already started) or to plug another USB device in (makes no difference to this error).

So I decided to find my own solution and I believe I have found one. There is a 'rdyboost' key in the registry which holds the information about whether Readyboost should be on or off, it took quite a bit of testing and I cannot guarantee this will work on ever machine (also export the registry key before doing any changes, create restore points yada yada) but it worked on my Win8 VM and I managed to duplicate the results on my Win7 host.

My research is on my blog here: http://hatsoffsecurity.com/2015/05/31/force-enabling-readyboost-windows-78/

(note. I do not get paid for the blog, any advertising has nothing to do with me :) )

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You have 2 options to improve your Laptop's performance using "alternatives" to ReadyBoost that work just the same or even better than a usb stick which has limited I/O speeds

Note1: on old systems with less than 2Gb ram everything helps!

Ok,

Option 1: (with the permisse that your Laptop SSD has enough space to install and run an OS plus your applications/personnal programs)

• Define your laptop's SSD drive as system disk and reinstall your OS on SSD (backup all your personnal data on a external drive before changing/formating laptop disks)
• Use your SATA drive as storage with non operating system files in it.

Note2: Attention! Formating/Instaling new OS/Changing disk definitions. Will delete your disks data!!! That data must be backed up before trying any of the above steps!

Option 2: (if your laptop's internal SSD drive is small in GB)

• Go to Control Panel,

     Advanced system settings,

     System Properties,

     Advanced "tab",

     Performance "settings" button

     Performance Options "Advanced" Tab

     Virtual Memory "change" button.

     Set the paging file size to manual on SSD drive

     On the SSD drive , set custom size to min:2Gb and max:4Gb

Note3: you might have better results if you define all your Paging file on the SSD disk and leave the SATA disk without Paging.. but if doing so, on the SSD set the Paging file size to system managed... and put your finghers crossed that your SSD doesn't stop working leaving your system in error without access to the paging files (much like a raid0 system. if one disk falls.. all is lost)

And there you go... readyboost on your internal SSD

Note4: Please verify and search for more info before attempting any of the steps written above!

Note5: I'm not an IT Guru.. just giving my humble opinion.. hope it helps!

"This device cannot be used for ReadyBoost.

ReadyBoost is not enabled because this computer is fast enough that ReadyBoost is unlikely to provide additional benefit."

The above is NOT an error message, isn't a bug, and is quite clear in what it means.

As soon as you fit the mSATA drive, the system registers it's presence as an INTERNAL drive, whether it is being used as a boot drive or is hosting the greater part of the page file or applications and files.

mSATA drives are marketed as cache boosters, and that is what you should do with it. From the desktop, go into Control Panel > Large Icons > System > Advanced System Settings > Advanced Tab > Performance > Settings and adjust your page file to leave a fixed 500mb on the main boot drive and then a System Managed page file on the mSATA drive.

Any space on the mSATA not being used for the page file can be used for fast access to applications and/or files.

Re Readyboost.. Readyboost is for use with USB flashdrives which are fast enough to make a difference on a system which has minimum memory and a slow hard drive.

Note that ReadyBoost is not active when booting and can't speed up boot times. It only improves cache access when the system is up and running and Windows or the application in use needs cache access..

I continue to look for an answer to this bug:

Why?

You have 4GB RAM - Readyboost will NOT give you any improvement in performance. At ALL.