How to enable Readyboost that is disabled in error

Anonymous

My laptop came pre-installed with Windows 8.1 on a 500GB 5400RPM HDD. It has 4GB memory.

Over the holidays someone gave me a 64GB m-SATA SSD, which I put into the laptop's m-SATA slot.

On the BIOS, the info shows that the SSD occupies the SATA 0 slot. I had to re-adjust the boot order to boot normally into my system disk, which is on the SATA 1 slot.

I wanted to use the m-SATA SSD as a Readyboost cache. When I carried out the steps to enable Readyboost on the SSD, it wouldn't let me. The error message is:

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.

There must be some mistake because the SSD is not the system disk. It only occupies SATA slot 0 (which I cannot change). The system disk is a typical HDD.

How do I go about enabling Readyboost on the SSD? Any tweaks or commands? I have tweaked the registry many times before so if need be I could do that.

[Note: Those who want to suggest other things like sell the SSD, leave it alone, or whatever, please just heckle some other thread.]

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Anonymous

Insert the flash drive or card, then right-click on it in This PC and select properties. Open the ReadyBoost tab.

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42 additional answers

Anonymous

2015-09-15T09:11:11+00:00

You must have measuring software then because I saw NO improvement whatsoever - and my machine had 4GB RAM - the Readyboost access is usually SLOWER than internal RAM or an SSD....
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Anonymous

2015-09-14T22:11:02+00:00

HatsoffSec,

Brilliant. Worked for me, thanks!

I found it at: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\rdyboost\AttachState

The key was to notice which item had a (2) value (mine was +4~4~~) and to change that to a zero.

For those still arguing that ReadyBoost doesn't do much they should try a bit of testing first. With the systems I work on (Win 7, Win 8, 2-8GB memory, etc.) I see at least a 50% and regularly 200% increase in random read speed (using for example Defragglers Benchmark). This just makes the system more responsive and quicker to do system maintenance (updates, defragging, backups, installs/uninstalls, etc.). It is not huge, but it is noticeable when working on a typical system.
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Anonymous

2015-09-02T01:11:14+00:00

"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"

This horse isn't dead yet. I am another user that would like to utilize my mSATA SSD for ReadyBoost.

I have a Raid 1 of two 2.5" drives. My boot drive sits at 100% usage during read operations for extended periods. I get at max half of what the SSD reads are. Random reads are abysmal on my HDD. I think that using my mSATA for ReadyBoost would be beneficial but I could be crazy. I have tried the registry entries from EMDgmt and from rdyboost, neither will allow me to use my SSD for ReadyBoost. I just ran a benchmark against both my OS partition and the SSD.

Microsoft, please do not pre-determine that a system should be incapable of using ReadyBoost. If we want to use it we should be able to enable if a drive is faster than the OS drive.

If anyone has any other ideas, please share, I will post my results.
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Anonymous

2015-09-01T11:05:57+00:00

I have a Dell XPS laptop with 8Gb of RAM, but in my development environment I sometimes have to run three Tomcat instances with 1Gb+ applications. I often get the "out of resources" error when my RAM usage is higher than 95%.

I bought a 32Gb USB thinking I would use ReadyBoost when handy, and now I find that Windows knows better and tells me my machine is fast enough.

Is there really no way to force ReadyBoost? I checked HatsoffSecblog, but I don't find the same entries in my computer.
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