Tuesday, May 29, 2007 9:56 AM
by
mattmcspirit
Measuring my ReadyBoost...
For those of you who haven't heard of ReadyBoost, where have you been? Only kidding, it's not the most common term, so I'll explain. Essentially, without going too deep and technical, ReadyBoost is a technology in Windows Vista that boosts the performance of your system using inexpensive flash memory. Yes, the flash memory found in USB Keys, SD cards and so on. So, if you've bought a USB key in the last couple of months, or even earlier, it's definitely worth testing it in Vista to see if it is ready for ReadyBoost, as your system will benefit from that little extra oomph under the hood. You will see the biggest difference in performance if you have less physical memory to start with, say, 512mb for example, and you buy, for around $20 (or £10 here in the UK), a 2GB USB key, and use ReadyBoost. If you already have 2GB physical RAM, and you utilise the 2GB USB key for ReadyBoost, you will see some benefit, but not as much as the other scenario.
Anyway, the point of the post - I'm using ReadyBoost, but how can I actually measure what is going on? Well, today is your lucky day...
- Click on the Start button.
- Click on Control Panel menu option. When in the Control Panel , change to classic view by clicking on the Classic View option.
- Double-click on the Administrative Tools icon.
- Double-click on Reliability and Performance Monitor icon.
- In the left menu click on the Performance Monitor under the Monitoring Tools category
- In the right pane, click on the green + sign to add new counters.
- Under available counters, scroll down till you see ReadyBoost Cache and double-click on it to expand this category.
- Select the ReadyBoost Cache counter that you would like to add by left-clicking on it and then clicking on the Add button. A list of the counters with some information as to what they mean is shown in a table below.
- Once you have added all the ReadyBoost Cache counters that you would like to monitor, press the OK button.
The various counters that you selected will now be seen in the Performance Monitor. As time goes on you will see the activity occurring in real time for each of these counters. Descriptions of the counters can be found below:
Bytes cached
The total amount of uncompressed data currently stored in the cache. If there is data being stored then you know ReadyBoost is being used by Vista.
Cache reads/sec
The number of times Vista reads from the cache per second. If you see a lot of cache reads per second then you know Vista ReadyBoost is working. If this occurs often when using your computer it is advised you invest in more physical memory to further increase performance.
Compression ratio
The actual size of the data in the cache divided by the uncompressed size of the data in the cache.
(actual size of the data in the cache) / (uncompressed size of the data in the cache)
Hit read bytes/sec
The number of bytes read from the cache per second. This is a further indication that the ReadyBoost cache is being used by Vista. If a lot of bytes are being read per second you also know that you need more physical memory to truly increase your performance.
Invalidated update buffer blocks/sec
The number of blocks in update buffers invalidated per second.
Invalidated update buffer bytes/sec
The number of bytes invalidated in update buffers per second.
No-regions reschedules/sec
Writes rescheduled due to the lack of regions per second.
No-update-buffers reschedules/sec
Writes rescheduled due to the lack of update buffers per second.
Read-Size-Max IOs bailed/sec
The number of I/Os not serviced by the cache because the size is bigger than the maximum read size per second.
Sequential IOs bailed/sec
The number of I/Os not serviced by the cache due to sequentiality per second.
Total read bytes/sec
The number of bytes read from the volume per second.
Total write bytes/sec
The number of bytes written to the volume per second.
Updated buffer read bytes/sec
The number of read bytes services from the update buffers per second.
