How to enable Readyboost that is disabled in error

Anonymous
2014-01-01T15:02:17+00:00

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.]

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Performance and system failures

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Anonymous
2015-05-06T22:06:26+00:00

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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  1. Anonymous
    2015-08-14T18:20:49+00:00

    This is not true. Readyboost gives a lot of performance improvement regardless the RAM installed. I have a Laptop with 16GB RAM and with Readyboost the difference is noticeable.

    This is because the false assumption that with 4GB RAM the whole superfetch is on RAM. Right? Well if you have enough free RAM. But if you have like me Google Chrome with a lot of extensions plus a Linux virtual a machine and another for Vagrant you won't have enough space to store the superfetch cache.

    Also in the "Performance Monitor" I can see my readyboost cache compressed is using 6GB. So I assume not all the cache is in RAM. Right?

    Another thing I have a laptop with a slow HD (7200RPM but is still slow I don't know why). If I hibernate instead of shutting down, when it resumes the superfetch is not in RAM and it takes a while to be. Meanwhile Readyboost makes the laptop responsive.

    I have found that if you use many devices (SD card + Pen drive) for readyboost you see improvement as well.

    When we have antivirus and is doing some scanning the laptop can still open applications fast due to ReadyBoost.

    So to all people which says ReadyBoost is a marketing feature made for 2GB RAM and older PCs including the Microsoft support one. Think again and test. Just plug an SD or Pen drive, and give ReadyBoost chance to show its potential.

    Regards

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-08-15T08:11:05+00:00

    another thing to consider is this, Memory is memory. regardless if it is called virtual memory, RAM, or Readyboost. having more memory, no matter how new your system is, can never, ever, be a bad thing.

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  3. 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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  4. 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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