How to use a pendrive as RAM in Windows

ReadyBoost enables you to plug a USB key into your machine and have Windows Vista use it as memory. I have seen this option "Speed up my system" many times when ever  I plug any USB device into my pc. But not taken it into consideration... And now it is the time to do it and share with you all...

Installation/Configuration
Plug the USB into your machine running Windows Vista/7.
Upon plugging the thumb, the autoplay dialog box will pop with many options how to treat the pen drive just inserted. You can see the "Speed up my system" option in the autoplay dialog box.

Once you click the "Speed up my system" option, the Properties dialog box for the device is displayed where you can specify to start/stop ReadyBoost usage of the device and how much space that can be used as a memory cache. This space is used more as a flash-based page file than true RAM, but the impact is that the more space you choose here, the more benefit you’ll get in terms of overall system performance.

The device properties dialog box will allow you to turn on/off ReadyBoost and to set the exact size of the cache.

(In order to return to this dialog box, open the Computer window, right-click the drive (H: in this case) and select Properties. From there, click the Memory tab (as shown in the previous screen capture and adjust the settings as needed).

Opening the drive in an Explorer window reveals that ReadyBoost has created a cache file of the specified size.

While ReadyBoost will work with other devices – such as SD Card, CompactFlash, etc. – I’ve only used it with a USB key and here are the baseline requirements the team gave me regarding what ReadyBoost will work with:

     +  The USB drive must be at least USB 2.0
     +  The USB Key has to have at least 64mb of free space