Readyboost for Vista is a feature added to the OS where you can encourage your limping Vista install to jog a bit faster by essentially using a smallish USB drive as disk cache. There’s also some Vista Voodoo with Superfetch going on there.
While Ubuntu (the distro that I use) and other distros don’t really use Superfetch, you can still get an advantage using the disk cache functionality – particularly if you’re running on a system that doesn’t have a ton of RAM available. This tutorial is written with Ubuntu in mind but can be easily modified to use with just about any distro. And yes, there’s some command line stuff. No, it’s not as guified as Vista.
First, stick the USB drive into an open USB slot. Make sure it’s a drive that you don’t mind overwriting.
Ubuntu should mount this automagically in /media/disk. You’ll probably also get a nifty icon on your desktop.
To unmount this – open up a terminal session (Applications-> Accessories-> Terminal) and type
mount
Now look to see where your USB drive is mounted. In Ubuntuland it’s usually under /media/disk or /media/usbdisk. On my system it’s mounted like this:
/dev/sdb1 on /media/disk type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,shortname=mixed,uid=1000,utf8,umask=077,flush)
The easy way to tell if this is the correct disk is to run the mount command before you stick it in your USB slot and then after. The newest mount – well that’s the one you want.
To unmount this, type:
sudo umount /dev/sdb1
Of course, change the /dev/sdb1 bit to reflect what’s on your system.
Now, we’re going to create a swap file on the unmounted USB drive. In my case I’ll type:
sudo mkswap /dev/sdb1
Again, change the /dev/sdb1 bit to what you say when you ran the ‘mount’ command earlier.
Now that I’ve filled this drive with a swap partition, it’s time to turn it on and give it high priority.
sudo swapon -p 32767 /dev/sdb1
That turns the swap partition on, with a priority (-p) of 32767. Why 32767? Well that’s the highest priority available. Here’s the documentation if you’re interested.
You can double check that you did everything correctly by checking the /proc/swaps file:
cat /proc/swaps
My output is as follows:
Filename Type Size Used Priority
/dev/sda5 partition 3229024 0 -1
/dev/sdb1 partition 1981928 0 32767
You can see I have about 2GB of swap space allocated on /dev/sdb1
This won’t give you a huge speed boost on higher memory machines but if you’re using a laptop with only 512 megs of RAM you should see a noticable difference.
Technorati Tags: how to, howto, ubuntu, linux, swap, readyboost, geek, technology, foss
Popularity: 6% [?]
July 25th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Hey! This was a really kickArs tutorial! I plugged an old Gigstick into an older 256 Meg trashable laptop and saw an impressive improvement. Thank you.
July 25th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
USB Flash drives. Is there nothing they can’t do?
Glad the article helped.
Ben
August 1st, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Your article is misleading. You are confusing disk caching with swap. Readyboost is (or tries to be) an intelligent disk cache (for files that are frequently accessed). Swap has to do with memory management (making programs believe that they have more memory available).
Linux already does good caching of disk data in memory (you can see that by running “free”). You may see some speed improvement by using a swap file on a usb stick, but it is much better to add some ram (especially if your system uses swap often).
August 18th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Prasinos is right.
On a somewhat related note, curious readers may be interested in readahead: http://www.google.com/search?q=ubuntu+readahead
September 1st, 2009 at 10:13 am
I strongly agree with Prasinos. Using a removable drive as an additional swap is in no-way similar to Windows Readyboost. More accurately, it is the equivalent inserting your removable drive into a Windows machine and adding it as an additional virtual memory for the system (under System Properties->Advanced tab->Performance & Virtual Mem). Furthermore, using a USB or SD-card drive as swap *can* dramatically reduce the life of the device. Swap partitions are typically written to & read on a frequent, regular basis. Most flash-based drives aren’t meant to be repeatedly written to many thousands of times on a regular basis.
Don’t get me wrong, having a ReadyBoost equivalent for Linux is a great idea! But it is essential to understand what ReadyBoost is & is not. Readyboost is NOT an extra swap space. Readyboost is (essentially) a preloader mechanism (A.K.A. prefetch, superfetch, preload, cache, etc.). When superfetch caches disk information to RAM, Readyboost basically gives superfetch another fast place to cache more disk information.
A preloader tries to predict what your system is going to pull from the disk, and essentially copies it into unused RAM before hand. Then, when you open up [insert huge bloated application here], it’s read from your blazing fast RAM instead of your slow hard drive. In other words:
DISK–>RAM
Readyboost simply builds on top of this idea by letting your system preload more stuff into an SD Card or Flash device. It’s not as fast as RAM, but it can be much faster than reading everything from the disk. In other words:
DISK–>Removable Drive
This improves performance because:
1) SD and USB flash drives *can be* faster at reading data than a regular disk.
2) Reading information from a an SD or USB flash drive frees your main disk from that task, making it more available to perform other tasks in the meantime.
Again, this has nothing to do with swap space or virtual memory. Swap space is intended to be a temporary place to offload what’s in RAM, in case you run out. In other words:
RAM–>Disk
Using an SD or USB flash drive for swap space sounds good because it might read faster, but it’s not a good idea. Why not?
1) Many types of flash memory may read the information SLOWER than your disk. (Tip: If you bought it from Wal-Mart, it’s probably not designed for performance)
2) Flash memory is typically much slower WRITING information, effectively negating or reducing swap performance.
3) Flash memory becomes a paper-weight after being written to so many times–much sooner than a magnetic disk would.
If you want your Linux system to perform faster, consider installing preload. For Ubuntu users, it is available in the repositories (use Synaptic Manager to install it, or type “sudo apt-get install preload” from a terminal. No extra steps required.)
If something becomes available to extend preload, prefetch, or some other type of Linux read-ahead mechanism onto removable media, sign me up! Until then, don’t kill your precious portable media.
October 28th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Flashmemory is seldom much faster than regular harddisks at reading large consecutive blocks. They ARE however MUCH faster at randomaccess since there are no heads to move around.
The benefit from ReadyBoost is from using that fast random access to read many SMALL files scattered around.
If you switch your harddisk to a SSD (Solid State Disk) you would probably not see any improvment at all with ReadyBoost.
Since flashmemory are usually rather slow at writing I don’t think the performance benefit of putting swapspace on a flashdisk is that big.
December 12th, 2009 at 10:43 am
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January 5th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
the swapboost script will only make a swap on a flash drive… it’s not like readyboost.
the real and afaik only readyboost clone for linux is here:
http://users.cis.fiu.edu/~zhaom/dmcache/index.html
(gpl source available)
and it’s a lot more complex thing
(it’s a kernel module)
April 3rd, 2010 at 2:31 pm
Excellent, it works for me! Thanks for the tutorial.
April 22nd, 2010 at 9:29 am
As several previous posters mentioned, this article’s information–however useful or not–does not produce an equivalent to Readyboost for Linux. Here’s the best way I can think of explaining this: Windows has always had a swap file. It is essentially used when memory/RAM **runs out**. It’s not a cache–it’s more of a “spill-over” function. Readyboost is a relatively new technology. It doesn’t act as a spill-over for memory/RAM when you’ve run out. Instead, it acts as a sort-of cache that proactively stores data that would otherwise be read from a disk (and then stores it on another disk, where it can basically figure out which one would be faster to use, or uses both in tandem for increased speed).
If you truly are interested in a Linux-based readyboost equivalent, ignore this misguiding tutorial and search the great-yonder interwebs for “linux preload”. Another similar tool, which is already included in many distributions, is called readahead. Otherwise, you’re going wind up killing your flash drive by using it as a swap.
June 11th, 2010 at 10:37 pm
Thanks! Worked liked a charm! Very well written!
August 4th, 2010 at 8:10 am
As Prasinos and Steve wrote, using USB to add swap is different from ReadyBoost, but Linux memory management is combined with disk cache, so adding a virtual memory enables larger disk cache, so the final effect may be similar to readyboost.
Some comments to other mentioned arguments:
“it is much better to add some ram (especially if your system uses swap often)”
The same case holds for ReadyBoost — adding RAM brings more performance, but plugging in a spare USB stick is cheaper and easier.
“Flash memory becomes a paper-weight after being written to so many times–much sooner than a magnetic disk would”
That is right, but ReadyBoost will write to the disk frequently, too. If ReadyBoost selects well the data, which are frequently read from disk, then the reading operations will prevail over writing operations, so swapping to a flash disk is probably little bit more aggresive than ReadyBoost, but it is only a guess…
August 4th, 2010 at 8:20 am
There is another issue with swapping to a USB — if you unplug the USB unexpectedly (without swapoff & umount), nasty things will happen. I guess with ReadyBoost nothing wrong will happen, because the data cached on the USB are still accessible on the hard drive.
November 21st, 2010 at 9:08 pm
Damn.. You got murked on your own blog, by some super geeks. Good job.
December 31st, 2010 at 5:48 pm
HI,
I just did my first installed of Ubuntu (lucid) from Win7 and I really like the ReadyBoast feature. So, can someone confirm whether this will work for 10.04?
Thanks,
Linda
February 27th, 2011 at 4:58 pm
It had been a whilst because I visited internet site with this kind of top quality details. Thansk lots for the helpful information
April 8th, 2011 at 12:48 pm
I really want to try this but when I type: sudo mkswap /dev/sdc1 (my drive) all I get is “device or resource busy”
June 21st, 2011 at 7:09 am
Das Essen von Japan ist eines der Dinge, die ich am meisten vermissen nicht da. Eines Tages hoffe ich, wieder für einen anderen Urlaub.
June 22nd, 2011 at 7:33 am
Yn olaf EVE ar-lein wedi gorffen eu diweddaru. Cymryd amser hir i’w llwytho i lawr ac yna gosod. Yna, a sefydlwyd y cymeriad i fy hoffi.
June 23rd, 2011 at 5:50 am
Durch eine Menge von Blogs heute in meiner Suche nach mehr Informationen.
June 29th, 2011 at 5:26 am
.Yesterday was a bright hot sunny day till the evening. Then there was rain for a few hours. This morning is dull and cold.
June 29th, 2011 at 5:53 am
Yesterday was a bright hot sunny day till the evening. Then there was rain for a few hours. This morning is dull and cold.
June 30th, 2011 at 4:34 am
feeling drained this morning. Sweating so much last night, i am suffering from dehydration. A few cups of coffee will help to restore the lost fluid and wake me up.
July 4th, 2011 at 5:00 am
.Monday morning once again and off to work i go. Wish i have the numbers for the euro lottery and win enough to retire for life.
But with my luck, i have the wrong numbers. 
July 6th, 2011 at 4:15 am
The weather is bright and sunny as i went to work. The forecast i saw before leaving for work show a large rain cloud heading to cover where i am. Looks like i am going home in rain later.
.
July 18th, 2011 at 4:55 am
Back from holidays. Well, staying at home holidays. Wish i earned enough to go on a holiday somewhere like Japan, or New Zealand.
July 19th, 2011 at 9:33 am
Ar ôl un diwrnod ar ddeg heb idiot o’r enw Sam, ei fod yn ôl yn y gwaith. Pan fydd y penaethiaid o gwmpas, ei fod yn frown ymyl flaen. Gwneud unrhyw esgus i fynd i mewn i’r ystafell ydynt mewn, fel pe dweud “edrych arna. Wyf yn gweithio”. Roedd ei agwedd at ffrindiau gwaith arall pan nad yw’r meistri yn cael eu gwmpas yn “Yr wyf yn well na chi”. Mae’n tynnu jôc ac mae’n ddoniol (yn ei feddwl). Ond os ydych yn tynnu yn jôc arno. Rydych yn yr isaf o’r holl ffurfiau bywyd ac efe yells ei ben i ffwrdd fel strancio bedair oed. Parc o fewn 6 troedfedd (2 fetr) ar ei gar smart ac rydych yn ei blocio.
July 21st, 2011 at 5:13 am
I wonder what it was like to live 20,000 years ago ? Working from dawn to dusk and making sure you gathered enough food to survive the winter. Times of plenty and times of hardship. How many of the people today, could survive back then ?
August 1st, 2011 at 7:00 am
.Where are we now on the evolution path ? Are we becoming civilized or still going down the path of increasing destructive powers ? Our medical knowledge increases with leaps and bounds of each war, but not as greatly as our destructive weapons.
August 9th, 2011 at 5:16 am
Oli vain lukea mellakoita Lontoossa ja muilla alueilla BBC kotisivuilta. Niiden pitäisi käyttää kumiluoteja, kyynelkaasu ja pippurisumutetta kunnes mellakoijia ovat työkyvyttömiä. Sitten alus heidät Afganistaniin, jotta he voivat oppia, miten käyttäytyä.
August 10th, 2011 at 6:11 am
Riots once more tear through several cities of England. Many people will turn up for their place of work today to find it wrecked or worse, destroyed. How many more are going to lose their jobs as their place of employment was destroyed ? Bring in the army and have a no holds barred in dealing with the rioters. They want to hurt others by throwing brick and other things, so should have the same violence back at them.
August 12th, 2011 at 4:30 am
?ngilt?r? bir neç? ??h?r vasit?sil? bir daha tear i?ti?a?lar?n. Bir çox q?zaya v? ya pis m?hv tapmaq üçün bu gün i? yeri üçün olur. I? yeri m?hv edilmi?dir öz i?l?rini itirm?k gedir nec? daha çox? H?rbi g?tirin v? rioters münasib?td? barred A keçirilib var. Onlar atma k?rpic v? dig?r ?eyl?r il? BA?QALARINA Z?YAN ist?yir?m, onlar geri eyni zorak?l?q olmal?d?r.
August 17th, 2011 at 7:30 am
Only two more days after this day of working on the government scheme.
Then back onto the unemployment queue next week. Thirteen weeks of doing a job and only getting forty five percent of the minimum wage for it and the government wonders why the scheme is not popular ! If I was being paid minimum wage I would have enjoyed it more and had some money saved up.
August 18th, 2011 at 8:56 am
.Hökum?t sxemi üzr? i?l?y?n bu günd?n sonra yaln?z iki gün.
I? gör?n v? yaln?z bunun üçün minimum ?m?k haqq?n?n q?rx be? faiz almaq v? sxemi populyar deyil dövl?t n?y? gör? güzellikler (Sonra geri i?sizlik queue g?l?n h?ft? üz?rind? on üç h?ft? m?n minimum ?m?k haqq? öd?nilir olan ?g?r m?n olard?! daha idil?r v? bir para xilas etdi.
August 22nd, 2011 at 7:44 am
Thanks for the informative, helpful blog.
August 22nd, 2011 at 11:06 am
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August 23rd, 2011 at 7:54 am
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August 23rd, 2011 at 10:22 am
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August 24th, 2011 at 9:09 am
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August 25th, 2011 at 5:42 am
Only if the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth below be searched out will I reject all the descendants of Israel.
September 5th, 2011 at 6:10 am
Hi there! Fine post! Please keep us posted when we will see a follow up!
November 11th, 2011 at 5:16 pm
So, just out of curiosity, what shall I do come a situation in which i need to remove the flash drive?