Windows ReadyBoost is a great technology, caching things on USB drives to improve system performance, and works really well for giving your system a little more oomph. But Windows only likes using devices of a certain speed and space. Bypass the requirement with these steps. Windows insists on checking the drives for certain speed requirements before enabling the feature. If you have a USB drive that is just a hair to slow to beat the test, or you want to use an external hard drive (slower speed, loads of cache space), here is how to use it.
- Plug in the device.
- Open the Readyboost tab on the device properties.
- Select “Do not retest this device”
- Unplug the device
- Open regedit (start->run->regedit)
- Navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion/EMDgmt - Find your device.
- Change Device Status to 2
- Change ReadSpeedKBs to 1000
- Change WriteSpeedKBs to 1000
- Plug in the device.
- Enable Readyboost!