Other day I was working on my laptop with Windows Vista installed on it. I wanted to copy some files from my USB key to laptop and inserted it. A dialog box poped up and presenting 2 options and one of the option was "Speed up my system". And I clicked on it and relaized that windows vista allows you to use your USB key as additional memory for your system. Thats pretty cool option considering the fact that Windows Vista has high hardware requirements. Atleast using USB key as additional memory provides little relief for existing machines that do not have lot of RAM installed.

Following images and steps will show you how you can use your USB key to speed up system.

• When you will insert a USB key in a USB slot on Windows Vista machine the following dialog box will appear.

• Click on "Speed up my system" option and then you will be presented with the following dialog box.

• Click on "Use this device" radio button option and from "Space to reserve for system speed" select how much memory you want to allocate from USB key for vista utlilization. By default all storage available on USB key will be in the text box value. If you are not using this USB key for anything else then just use the whole available space. This is all that you need to do for using your USB key to speed up system.

Change the storage used for speed up

If you want to change the allocated storage for speed up later on, follow the steps described below.

• Launch Control Panel and select System option from it.
• On this dialog box, you will notice there is an option Performance in the lower right corner on left side. Click on that.
• You will be presented with following dialog box.

• Click on Advanced Tools option in left menu. This will launch the following dialog box.

• On this dialog box notice option Configure my Windows Readyboot Device. Click on it and you will be presented with dialog box to configure the USB key usage for speed up.