Windows Ready Boost wiped photos

[David H]

I always load my digital camera onto Adobe Phtoshop free edition, and my laptop running Vista sometimes asks me if I want to speed up performance with Windows Ready Boost. Being Windows I trusted them so clicked yes and it wiped my Olympus XD card (over 1700 photos) although the earlier ones were already loaded the ones today of course were not and have handed the card over to an engineer just in case. But my question is why have Windows produced a supposedly helpful program which actually causes far more damage than a virus?

[Buenchico]

Er, you didn't unplug the ReadyBoost-enabled USB stick while your computer was still switched on, did you? That's a recipe for disaster!

[TTG]

Freeware program Recuva might have recovered them if photos were just deleted and the card was not formatted to remove them. Try it you might get lucky.

[Mobius1]

When ReadyBoost presents itself via AutoPlay, which is what has happened in your case - it presents you with a message asking you if you want to use the device to speed up Windows - then it is meant to inform you if there is insufficient space on the media. There should have been a message prompting you to free space on device.

Normally, ReadyBoost should not autocratically delete user files on a device without user intervention, as the ReadyBoost option will present itself with AutoPlay every time the device is connected to the PC.

So in answer to your question, Microsoft haven't developed a harmful feature, but in your case something has unfortunately gone wrong and the feature has acted in a way that it is not meant to. ReadyBoost is actually a very useful feature, especially for PCs with a limited amount of RAM. It works best with a USB flash drive that you have permanently plugged into the machine though. It would only have been of benefit to you if never intended to unplug your camera from your PC ever again...

[David H]

I suspect now readyboost was a symptom of a problem and not a cause. I plug the card reader in every few days and rarely get the message, and think the reason it popped up and stayed is it wasn't reading any photos in the first place. I had one pixelated photo on Thursday which I didn't think anything of, and having got a friend to recover (thank goodness) the photos including Sunday's which were a 30 mile plus location I didn't fancy having to do again, the last four were pixelated with the final one I took not coming out.
Therefore with more information I think readyboost was a symptom of an existing wiped card, so can let them off the hook now!