Hello Friends,
I am doing a research on Vista's ReadyBoost feature and its implications on forensics analysis. However, I can't seem to get the ReadyBoost feature to function because my Vista is keep saying that my flash memory (thumb drive) "does not have the required performance characteristics for use in speeding up your system".
I'm using a Kingston thumb drive (2GB) with 500MB of free space. If I'm not mistaken (theoretically), readyboost should work well as long as the thumb drive has a minimum of 256MB of free space.
Thank you.
Hiya,
There are speed requirements as well of the device, more details can be found here http//
Thing is, it is about random I/O to the device, not sequential, so even though the drive may seem fast enough in it's technical specification, it's actual performance may not meet the grade ?
Not really, it is recommended to configure ReadyBoost to use one to three times the amount of RAM, ReadyBoost needs flash memory, 2.5mb sec throughput for 4kb random reads and 1.75mb/sec throughput for 512kb random writes (most ReadyBoost capable thumb drives are labeled with "support Vista ReadyBoost" or something like that)
It is possible to use up to 4GB flash memory (limited by FAT32)
ReadyBoost Memory is Cache, Vista doesn´t put the pagefile on to the flash memory. Everything that is written to the ReadyBoost device is AES-128 encrypted
You can edit the registry to force Vista to use a USB device even if it doesn't meet the grade. Obviously you wouldn't want to do this if you actually wanted the performance enhancements of ReadyBoost but if you're just testing it and want to examine the data structure, etc then this would save you having to buy another USB device.
There's an article below that covers the steps you need to take
http//
I'd be interested to see if you can find any forensic artefacts. From my understanding the readyboost cache file sounds like a tough nut to crack with a per-boot AES encryption key and 21 compression.
Thank you guys, especially BERT_UK… I am going to edit the registry to force Vista to use the thumb drive.. the sole purpose is to analyze the drive, not to enhance the performance of the machine.. will post my findings here..