HOW TO USE USB FLASH DRIVE MEMORY AS EXTRA VIRTUAL RAM

Use a USB Flash Drive to Add Extra Virtual RAM to Your Computer

As you all know, USB flash drives are highly useful for transporting data from one computer to another, but for those out there still using Window$, yet another innovative feature is available:

USB flash drives can be used to boost your virtual RAM and give your machine more brainpower to handle multiple tasks. RAM refers to random access memory, which is the computer's short term memory. So to sum it up with easy words: RAM memory keeps your machine thinking while several programs are open.

While flash drive RAM won't be as effective as the RAM installed on the computer, it is certainly helpful to have this little memory boost for your many tasks and until more physical RAM can be installed in the system.

Learn about how to use your USB drives as RAM and follow these easy steps to boost your memory!

1. Step One

Insert the flash drive into an available USB slot. An auto play option may come onto the screen. If so, select the option, "Speed Up My System." This will open the ReadyBoost technology menu to allocate a portion of the flash drive memory to the system RAM. If this auto play option doesn't appear on the screen, continue to step two.

2. Step Two

Open "My Computer." The flash drive will have a letter allocated to it. Traditionally, the hard drive is C, the disc drives are D and E, so the flash drive is likely to be F. This is different for each system, depending on the number of hard drives, partitions, and optical drives you may have.

If the drive letter cannot be located, unplug the drive and insert it again, paying attention to the letter that pops up on the screen. Select the appropriate drive letter for the flash drive, right click it, and choose "Properties." From here, select the "ReadyBoost" tab.

3. Step Three

Choose the amount of flash memory to allocate to RAM. Once the amount of RAM has been selected, the system will begin to use it:

You will notice an immediate boost in performance, as your computer is now using the extra memory from the USB flash drive in order to gain more brain-power for demanding multi-tasking jobs.

This is good to have especially for memory intensive tasks such as graphical design, gaming or if you are used to keeping many windows open at the same time.

Tips & Tricks
Do not use a flash drive containing more than 4GB of memory for this RAM boost
Your system should have at least 512MB of system RAM for this trick to work
This feature is not available in Windows XP or any older Windows versions

For more information on how to improve your productivity by using your USB flash drive as a small but highly efficient and portable computer drive loaded with your favorite software, you'll need to check out our recent blog post about USB Software: New Release of PortableApps