There is a built-in feature in windows 7 known as “Ready Boost” that enables you to use Flash / pen drive as an extended RAM for your computer. The idea is very much beneficial because at times we run out of memory, for example when playing heavy graphics games etc. The idea however has some drawbacks too that have the potential to deteriorate the health of your USB / Pen drive at a very fast rate.
The Flash drive which we use commonly is actually a type of EEPROM (EEPROM stands for electronically erasable programmable ROM) and is not purposely designed for these kinds of tasks. Flash drives have certain limitations associated with them. One of them is program/ erases cycles. Program/erase cycles is a measure number of times a chip can be erased and programmed before it becomes unusable. Currently for most of the commonly used flash drives, program/ erase cycle are 500,000. That means you can write and erase data 500,000 times before the device does not remain usable anymore. For functioning as a RAM the program / erase cycles of Flash Drive must go infinite as in the case of a Hard Disk or actual RAM chip you use in your computer.
When operated as an extended RAM with computer, program / erase instructions are generated in micro seconds by the CPU to store and erase data from the flash drive stick. Literally the number of instructions ranges from tens of thousand to hundreds of thousand instructions per second. If this goes on for a long time then most probably you will end up rendering your flash drive unusable for ever.
That is why it is strongly recommended to use your flash drive as an extended RAM only during the time of intense needs.
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