Are we almost at the end of beta testing?

eBoostr Beta Program Forum » General

(13 posts) (7 voices)

Started 4 months ago by flash1000
Latest reply from SwitchBladeZ

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flash1000
Member

I have been testing 4.0 Beta on both desktop (Intel Q6600 w/XP SP3) and netbook (Atom N260 w/XP SP3) for at least four months, and no trouble was identified so far. Here’s my impression of Beta 4.0:

When considering the cold boot time, eBoostr will be the most effective for the system consists of Windows XP, Slow HDD, and fast USB drive on USB 2.0. A person who has such PC will clearly realize this tool is effective.

Once OS is fully loaded, then SD card would become a better cache device than USB drive. Using system RAM for cache may be a bit risky (therefore a warning appears when I try to make the function available, I guess…). For those who have faster PC, I recommend to use Class 6 (or 10) HCSD as cache device, and accelerate applications by adding in the priority list. In this case, we cannot expect drastic change in the boot time because the PC does not recognize SD card until OS loads the card reader driver, unlike USB drive, which is recognized at BIOS level.

I wonder if we can separately manage files when building cache, like; OS system files required at boot stage to USB, and other OS files and application files to SD or RAM. I think this would maximize the benefit of this tool.

Posted 4 months ago #
flash1000
Member

It’s been almost 7 months since I started this beta test. Overall, eBoostr Ver. 4 did work good (better than Beta 3). And fortunately, I did not experience any serious trouble on my both Desktop and Netbook. (Both XP Home SP3).

When comparing Beta 4 with Ver. 3, Beta 4 marks higher cache hit ratio throughout the PC operations, and is a bit faster than Ver. 3.
As a result of my Windows XP cold boot speed test, Beta 4 Build 551 without encryption recorded the fastest time as shown below:

Rank---Time--------Ver.
1---------2m01s12---4.0 Build 551 without encryption
2---------2m01s47---4.0 Build 547 (no encryption capability)
3---------2m08s91---4.0 Build 551 encrypted
4---------2m09s67---4.0 Build 553 without encryption
5---------2m23s84---(Without eBoostr)

I could verify the improved quality of Beta 4 during this test, and found no trouble of the new functions such as “Managing cache”, “Encryption of cache devise”, and “using Unmanaged RAM”.

Although I agree with the suggestions that Shigy21 and Bunji94 posted regarding the Japanese translation, it does not seriously impact the functionality of this software.

I thank Andrey for allowing me this opportunity, and I am proud of being able to participate in this Beta test.

Posted 4 months ago #
Bunji94
Beta Veteran

Concur. Ver 4 is distinctly making my PC restart time faster than Ver 3, and the time became faster as Ver 4's Build # was incremented. Unfortunately, I did not measure the rebooting time as flash1000 did. Sorry that I do not have the statistics to present, but Ver4 is faster.... with more functions than Ver 3. [Bunji94 from Japan]

Posted 4 months ago #
Colonel ONeill
Beta Veteran

Agreed; I noticed a general boot time improvement with eBoostr active on the order of about an entire minute. Without eBoostr, the system would get to my desktop, but lag severely when attempting to interact with it. Although technically, one may argue that Windows has booted, I don't consider it ready because it acts super sluggish. After introducing eBoostr to the equation, the system not only gets to desktop faster, it also is much more responsive then; I am able to start loading programs and browsing the net.

I think eBoostr has really exceeded my expectations; all it needs now is a bit of an interface tweak ;P

Posted 4 months ago #
Robert Persons
Member

Flash1000 - Thanks for the info! I'm curious why you find that an SD card is a better cache device once the OS is booted. When using a USB card reader I would expect results to be similar to a fast USB flash drive.

Thanks.

Posted 4 months ago #
Sugar
Beta Veteran

SD card might be a best solution for netbooks, as most of those has the card slot, plus looks more neat than plugging thumb drive.

Posted 4 months ago #
flash1000
Member

Thank Bunji94, Colonel ONeill, Robert Persons, and Sugar for adding the comment to this topic.

Hi, Robert,

Reason of “Why I find SD is better…” is because of the variety of connection methods of SD card. If you use your SD with the common card reader, it will be similar to a thumb drive (USB flash memory) as you mentioned. The most of SD card readers (both internal and external readers) are on USB controller, and are recognized as drive at the BIOS level, as well as a thumb drive (USB flash memory).
However, SD card may be connected to PC by unusual method (if someone attempt to challenge me), for example, via Digital Camera, cellular phone, and/or other non-card-reader device. In such case, the SD card may not be recognized at BIOS level.

I might be overly nervous of SD card matter in above impression report. But this forum is open to public, so I had to say that way.

Also, I recommend Class 6 SDHC (well, I found typo in first post) because the price is getting reasonable, and is almost same as the “Fast” thumb drive of the same capacity.
I said “Fast thumb drive”, and this is the key. When we look for a faster thumb drive, how may of the products release the actual speed data? Most likely, the advertisement says “Fast”, or “Compatible with Windows Ready Boost” or so.
Required speed for Windows Ready Boost is “Random Read 4KB：2.5MByte/s, Random Write 512KB：1.75MByte/s” or faster.
On the other hand, Class 6 SDHC defines a minimum of 48Mbit/s (6Mbyte/s).

When comparing the technologies of SD card, Thumb Drive, and SSD, those are all flash memory. For thumb drive and SSD, SLC (Single Level Cell) flash is available and is to be much faster than Class 6 SDHC, but is extremely expensive.

eBoostr provides us a great benefit of speeding up our PC. And the people who love eBoostr do not want to invest too much for the speed.

Speaking without becoming nervous, I believe that “using Class 6 SDHC as cache device via common Card reader on USB 2.0 port” is the most reasonable when considering the speed improvement and the cost effectiveness.

Sorry for this long explanations.

Posted 4 months ago #
Robert Persons
Member

Flash1000 .. thank you for the explanation!

What I seem to see for the top end speed of flash drives on USB ports is in the lower 30s MB/s. Although a USB port should support more, I haven't seen that in real world testing. Has anyone else? I know that the OCZ throttle can be connected by USB 2.0 or eSata. On eSata read speeds are up to 90 MB/s, but that same drive tested on USB comes in around 30 MB/s ... so that seems to verify USB real world top speed.

So to make use of a Class 6 SDHC card with a minimum of 48 MB/s would require a connection that is Not on the USB bus. That clarified things for me.

As a side note, Active Media just came out with an eSata flash drive that claims read speeds up to 100MB/sec in an eSATA port. You can find it at Amazon; just search "active media esata amazon"

I'm considering getting one ... anybody have experience with Active Media products? Are they reliable?

Thanks,

Robert

Posted 4 months ago #
Colonel ONeill
Beta Veteran

Just out of curiosity, are you guys using SD cards with a built-in reader (I have on that appears to be attached to an ExpressCard/54 slot) or with a USB driven reader?

Also, what kind of random read speeds does eBoostr report?
I'm using a makeshift 256MB microSD --> mSD to SD adapter --> Laptop SD reader, which gives me read speeds of about 7MB/s.

Posted 4 months ago #
flash1000
Member

Robert,

The minimum guaranteed read speed of Class 6 SDHC is 48 Mbit/s (6 Mbyte/s), but is not 48 Mbyte/s. Therefore, it is a way lower than the maximum USB transfer speed, I believe.
When comparing high quality SD card and SDHC, there would not be much difference in the read speed between them, or some SD may be faster than SDHC. Only difference is that SDHC has the standard of minimum guaranteed speed that is clearly identified on the product.

Thank you for your report about OCZ throttle. That is what I am interested in.

Colonel ONeill,

I am testing eBoostr on my MSI Netbook U100 with two cache devices; (1) 256MB of 1GB Kingston SD and (2) 2GB of 2GB Team Thumb Drive.
Netbook has built-in card reader (Realtek Card Reader) on USB controller, and is capable of SDHC read/write. (Today’s) Random read speed of respective devices are:
11,488KB/s --- SD
18,099KB/s --- Thumb Drive

After reading your way of SD card connection, I pulled my 1GB Transcend MicroSD out of cellular phone for the comparison. I assigned 256MB out of 1GB, and build the cache on it. Then, the speed was 7,909KB/s, which is almost the same as yours. The speed was taken right after the cache was built, so it may not be accurate for the continuous usage.

Posted 4 months ago #
wwjd0691
Member

I am using Sandisk micro SDHC class 6 with tiny card reader from Largo which is a little bigger that nano wireless mouse receiver. It sticks out a little bit but I can leave in my laptop.

Random read speed of the device is:
17381 kB/s

It might be good choice for laptop users who want to use eBoostr.

Posted 4 months ago #
flash1000
Member

wwjd0691,

Thank you for the Class 6 SDHC info.
I agree with you that the combination use of MicroSD and its USB adapter on laptop/netbook is good, too.

Posted 4 months ago #
SwitchBladeZ
Member

I think this would be a total feature request, Device time selection, IE at BOOT or SET BOOT FILES to eBoost from USB then have the option to shift to CardMedia or other USB after boot...

other then that, since beta all bugs I have reported (or not had to because others had the same bugs) have been fixed, on my Dell D810-IntelCeleronM 1.7Ghz-2GB DDR2-5400RPM 80GB- and my Server (specs to long to list) things have run great without many issues (other then those that have been fixed)

Great Beta!

I really wish they would get into Mobile programming and do something like eBoostr for the WindowsMobile6.5 platform (not WP7S that ugly monstrosity of a Apple iPhone wannabe clone bullshit <-pure hate if you cant tell)

Posted 3 months ago #

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