Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
panel USB port connectors found on most modern motherboards. Other than the mounting location,
internal bay mounted card readers are functionally identical to external readers. One problem with
internally mounted readers is that you usually have to open the PC to disconnect them. Disconnection
is normally required when installing an OS to prevent issues with improper drive letter assignments.
Before you purchase an external card reader, check your PC and your photo printer, either of which
may already have a built-in reader. The built-in readers in photo printers are especially convenient
because you can often print photos directly from the flash card without having to transfer the files to
your PC. Many laptops include a single-slot card reader that supports SD, Memory Stick, and xD-
Picture Card media. If you use CompactFlash, you still need to use an external card reader.
Note
USB 3.0 card readers are now available and provide transfer rates that are much faster than
USB 2.0 card readers. If you use systems with USB 3.0 ports, consider upgrading to a USB 3.0
card reader for faster file copying performance.
ReadyBoost Support
Microsoft Windows Vista and newer all include support for using high-speed flash memory cards and
USB drives as a disk cache known as ReadyBoost.
When you configure flash memory as ReadyBoost, it is used to hold information about application
files and libraries that has been loaded into memory by SuperFetch. SuperFetch helps improve system
performance by providing information from RAM rather than directly from disk.
Using ReadyBoost to hold SuperFetch information can help improve your computer's performance if
it has a slow hard disk (4.0 or lower score on the Windows Experience Index [WEI]) or if you have
limited system RAM (4GB or less).
A flash memory device must have at least 256MB of free space to be usable with ReadyBoost.
Maximum size of the ReadyBoost cache varies by the file system used by the device:
• 4GB on a device using FAT32
• 32GB on a device using NTFS
Windows automatically tests an eligible flash memory device for ReadyBoost-compatibility when
you plug it in. When a device is tested by Windows to determine if it is ReadyBoost-compatible, the
random read/write speed of the media must meet the following minimums:
• 2.5MBps throughput for random 4KB reads
• 1.75MBps throughput for random 1MB writes
ReadyBoost is used only for non-sequential disk reads. To help determine the performance
improvement that ReadyBoost provides on a specific system, use the Performance Monitor tool in the
Computer Management console and enable the ReadyBoost Cache counters (cache read bytes/sec,
cache reads/sec, skipped read bytes/sec, and skipped reads/sec). Note that Windows 7 supports
multiple ReadyBoost cache devices.
Note
Conventional USB 2.0-based card readers are usually not fast enough for use with
