eBoostr Trial: The SD card

eBoostr Trial: The SD card

Since my attempt to move my tablet's pagefile (http://sumocat.blogspot.com/2008/04/pagefile-experiment-is-this-thing-on.html) to a flash memory card failed, I've decided to evolve the experiment into a test of a performance accelerating app called eBoostr (http://www.eboostr.com/).

It functions like ReadyBoost (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Boost) on Windows Vista, building a cache file on a flash drive from which the computer can pull data instead of pulling it from the pagefile. It is intended to boost performance on PCs with limited memory, but I'm primarily interested in seeing how well it lifts the load off the hard drive, which should cut heat and power consumption. A speed boost, if any, will be a bonus.

I'm also interested in seeing how quickly it will wear out a flash memory card. For that part of the experiment, I've selected a fresh, new Sandisk Ultra II 4GB SDHC card (http://www.sandisk.com/Products/ProductInfo.aspx?ID=2201). It was on sale at Best Buy to which I had a $10 gift card burning a hole in my pocket, so I spent about $26 of my birthday money on it.

That may seem wasteful for a product I intend to wear out, but there is extra space for backup data and PortableApps (http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable/test), which I'd been using for testing Firefox 3 (http://sumocat.blogspot.com/2008/03/firefox-3-beta-4-fully-armed-and.html). And it's a high-speed card, so it upgrades my speed in those things. Finally, it came with a USB card reader, so I don't have to remove it to read other SD cards (useful once I replace my broken camera).

This is also my first SDHC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital_card#SDHC) card. My other cards are standard, low capacity SD. Toshiba is a champion of the SDHC format, and my tablet is a Toshiba, so I wasn't worried about compatibility... until I plugged it in.

When I first plugged in my new card, my computer failed to recognize it at all. No beep or failure notice. Just didn't do anything. Using the USB adapter worked perfectly, but the card reader did nothing. So I hit the web and found a patch (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934428) for Windows XP that enabled SDHC cards greater than 4GB to work. Yeah, I know, my card is not greater than 4GB, but I figured greater than or equal. In a welcome change of recent pace, it worked.

So there's the hardware for the trial. Next step is setting up the software.
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