RAM disk!!!

[Cyrix_2k]

Fixed the link

Forget RAID! Just buy some extra ram and use a ram drive! Ram's cheap now days so stock up because stuff runs so friken FAST on my ramdrive! If I had enough ram, I'd install a game on it, copy the files to directory on your normal drive, and have windows load the files back to the ram drive on boot. It's so fast that when you click on a file to open it, it's immediatly open. NO DELAY AT ALL!!! Omg, it's just SO fast. See for yourself, download this
Download here (http://members.fortunecity.com/qualitysoftware/RAMDisk/RAMDisk.exe)

Sandra benchy below:

[Cyrix_2k]

Sorry, I had to cut the side off so i could attach the image. The Ramd disk bar is TWICE as long as you see above. It really kicked the SCSI Raid's ass!

To scale benchy with same drives:

[Cyrix_2k]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I reran the benchmark for the second screenshot 'cause I exited out of sandra before I relized I had to resize the image.

OMG, this thing is FAST!!!

[JigPu]

lol, yet another Ramdisk lover :D Mine dosen't do quite as well as yours (sandra only gives it 310MB/sec), but considering that this is with a 133x2 bus.... :D

Ramdisks are really nice if you have enough RAM to spare. But they do need a LOT of RAM to be useful. Mine's 100MB, and I barely use the thing. It would be a lot more handy if it were about 1GB, where I could install a whole game on the sucker or use it as a virtual CD drive.

Here's a nice screenshot :) 11.3GB of data (50% read, 50% write) in 66 seconds :cool:
http://pokemonrepository.no-ip.com/ocforums/ramdrive.jpg

JigPu

[JigPu]

BTW: If somebody's looking for a free ramdisk that dosen't have the (evil) 64MB limitation, try the software I use here (http://www.arsoft-online.de/products/product.php?id=1).

It's not as customizable as the one above's (for pay) Standard and Pro, but it's about the same as the free one (which is linked above).

JigPu

[Cyrix_2k]

Cool, just downloaded your ramdrive proggy. Hello 110mb Ram Drive!

[Sophisticated]

so how do you set this up and such..so called better then raid thing

[Sophisticated]

What are the system requirements

[Cyrix_2k]

Lots of ram and Windows 9x, 2000, or XP. Me, I'm running XP pro. For my rig's specs, see my sig below.

[Sophisticated]

i got 192Mb of RAM think it'll hold up

[Cyrix_2k]

what OS are you running? If it's XP the answers NO, with 9x, you might be good for a small (~16mb) ram drive if you're not running too much in the background.

[Sophisticated]

im running XP Pro and oh well ill just stick with Raid 0

[Cyrix_2k]

Originally posted by Sophisticated
im running XP Pro and oh well ill just stick with Raid 0

You really should get more RAM. 256mb is pretty much the minimum for XP.

[tom10167]

Could I set up a ramdrive and store my page file on it? :D I have 1 gigabyte of PC3200 and one IDE drive with a SATA adaptor. Windows 2000.

That would be nifty. :D

[JigPu]

I'm pretty sure I've heard you can, though the benifits are pretty much nil. I suppose that if you've got 1GB of RAM and have a really smal pagefile it may work out, but I wouldn't expect a huge increase in performance.

I just stick my IE cache on the sucker and watch pages I've been to fly open :D

JigPu

[johan851]

I'm pretty sure I've heard you can, though the benifits are pretty much nil. I suppose that if you've got 1GB of RAM and have a really smal pagefile it may work out, but I wouldn't expect a huge increase in performance.
I thought of that, but then realized it was absolutely useless. Your system only switches to pagefile when it runs out of RAM. When you have a RAM drive to hold your pagefile, all you're doing is...losing RAM so that when you run out of RAM your pagefile's faster. But you'll run out of RAM faster, and switch to your pagefile faster, which is RAM anyway. See how it goes in circles? :D

RAM disks are fun, but loading apps to them and all that jazz takes a lot of work and a lot of RAM. One good use is as a 10mb or so disk to use as your IE cache.

[robjen]

I have a pvr computer that I use a ramdesk for all of video software. It is fast.

[JigPu]

Originally posted by johan851
I thought of that, but then realized it was absolutely useless. Your system only switches to pagefile when it runs out of RAM. When you have a RAM drive to hold your pagefile, all you're doing is...losing RAM so that when you run out of RAM your pagefile's faster. But you'll run out of RAM faster, and switch to your pagefile faster, which is RAM anyway. See how it goes in circles? :D
Actually, XP dosen't use the pagefile just when you run out of RAM. It will cache infrequently used data there in order to free up more of the physical RAM (even if loads are already free). Though the logic still holds since XP will allways try to keep at least some of your RAM free, and if it's dumping most of the running program to pagefile to acomplish that, having it on a Ramdrive is kinda counterintuitive :D

JigPu

[tom10167]

UT2004 uses quite a bit of Virtual Memory. 94megs of vm and 60megs of the regular stuff. :shrug:

[Despotes]

Cyrix_2k Your link has taken me to many places, but the program you mentioned.
Could you repost it?

Thanks-----

[Cyrix_2k]

Originally posted by Despotes
Cyrix_2k Your link has taken me to many places, but the program you mentioned.
Could you repost it?

Thanks-----

sure! Just checked and it does what it's doing to you, to me. However, i sugest Jigpu's link instead as it can create a Ram disk larger than 64mb. Infact, it can go all the way up to two gigs!

BTW, here's the source for my link (http://www.iamnotageek.com/showthread.php?t=53329)

[Cyrix_2k]

The link works now.

[Despotes]

Got it. Thanks:)

[Cyrix_2k]

Enjoy! :D

[DayUSeX]

hm in installed teh software, but for some reason the ramdisk dosent work, i checked device manager and it says driver not loaded (this is after reboots, unstalls, and reinstalls), i noticed there is no ramdisk.sys only the ramdisk.cpl, coudl some one send me the drivers to the AR soft ram disk or post where to get them, thnx.

[Cyrix_2k]

does this help? (http://www.arsoft-online.com/products/product.php?id=1)

[Cyrix_2k]

Whoa! I just noticed you had 4gb's of BH5. Holy Sh*t! Also, if you need anymore help, PM JigPu. Sounds like he knows more than me, obviously.

[JigPu]

Originally posted by DayUSeX
hm in installed teh software, but for some reason the ramdisk dosent work, i checked device manager and it says driver not loaded (this is after reboots, unstalls, and reinstalls), i noticed there is no ramdisk.sys only the ramdisk.cpl, coudl some one send me the drivers to the AR soft ram disk or post where to get them, thnx.
The ZIP file should contain only the setup.exe file. Once you run that, it should install the control panel and .SYS driver. If it didn't install the driver for some reason though, download the attached ZIP which contains my ramdisk.sys file. Extract it to C:\Windows\system32\drivers\

If that dosen't work try also putting a copy into the following folders (it's also in these on my drive, though it looks like they're just backups)
C:\WINDOWS\LastGood\system32\drivers
C:\WINDOWS\system32\ReinstallBackups\0009\DriverFi les


Hope it helps, having 4GB ought to be awesome with a ramdrive :drool:

JigPu

[JaY_III]

PCI Express will make RAM Disks really uselfull i think...
Slap in the add in card, fill it with sic amounts of cheap RAM...

1x is speced 200MB/s... not a bad add in drive i would say

[Cyrix_2k]

Originally posted by DayUSeX
hm in installed teh software, but for some reason the ramdisk dosent work, i checked device manager and it says driver not loaded (this is after reboots, unstalls, and reinstalls), i noticed there is no ramdisk.sys only the ramdisk.cpl, coudl some one send me the drivers to the AR soft ram disk or post where to get them, thnx.

Did you get it working?

[DayUSeX]

no!!! its driving me crazy, i copied over the ramdisk.sys installed manually, and on bootup it still says unable to load driver AHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[elec999]

Can you please guide us how to copy the neccesarry files to speed up windows to ram.

[greenman100]

Originally posted by elec999
Can you please guide us how to copy the neccesarry files to speed up windows to ram.

you can't, besides setting your page file to a RAM disk. It'd be tough to do what you want without editing executable code.

[elec999]

So theres no way to use the ram drive to inprove your os load times, application performance, etc.

[kct2]

Ram's cheap now days so stock up


RAM prices are high, and on the rise. Just compare RAM prices today vs. a year ago. They have almost doubled. Where are you finding 'cheap' ram, or do you all just have a different idea of 'cheap'?:(

[EagleClaw]

Well I use Superspeed ramdisk http://www.superspeed.com/ramdisk.html

I have a 60 meg ram drive and I put Mozilla Firefox on it. The program will backup the ram drive and restore it on shutdown and startup.

You could do that with any program, works great


Originally posted by elec999
So theres no way to use the ram drive to inprove your os load times, application performance, etc.

[Como]

yeah, i've always wanted...to get a gig of ram and make a 700 meg ramdrive. can you say burn a cd at 48X hwile defraging? i can :) i'd get a kick out of it...then install postal2 on it.too bad loading the game wouldnt end well, trying to fit that came in hte 300 megs left...ugh.

[elec999]

Nice speeds. Would it be possible to install the os to the ram, or get a software to copy the os from the hard drive to ram, then back to drive, when restarting or anything like that. Saving all the changes back on the disk.

[ajrettke]

Elec, it would almost be pointless to install the OS to a ramdrive, because all the essential files are already put into memory when your OS loads anyway. Also what your talking about would most likely require a special OS to load up the RAM drive with all the OS files (which I think is 2gb+....a lot of drivers and other stuff that's hardly used after the install stay on the HDD and you rarely use em).

Does anyone know how I could write a script to copy files into the RAMdisk when winows loads?

[stockhatch]

RAMdiskXP wont let me have more than 100 MB or RAM :(

AC

[elec999]

Elec, it would almost be pointless to install the OS to a ramdrive, because all the essential files are already put into memory when your OS loads anyway. Also what your talking about would most likely require a special OS to load up the RAM drive with all the OS files (which I think is 2gb+....a lot of drivers and other stuff that's hardly used after the install stay on the HDD and you rarely use em).

Does anyone know how I could write a script to copy files into the RAMdisk when winows loads?
What I am trying to say, I would lvoe to have my windows folder, program files, etc in the ram. So lets say I ran a program or something, it would go real fast. Then if install per say firefox browser it would go in the ram drive, after everything is done, any made changes copy it to the hard drive for a updated image.

[stockhatch]

Too bad BFV is over a GB in size, or I would install it on a ramdrive :D Would that be cool or what?

AC

[Froggy]

I am bumping this ANCIENT thread to see if there any updates to allow larger sizes. Now that RAM is practically free, using a 1-2GB RAM Disk may make sense. Can anybody offer any input here?

[Hazaro]

RAM limit ?:clap:

What about I-RAM or SSD now?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-RAM

[aja]

I am bumping this ANCIENT thread to see if there any updates to allow larger sizes. Now that RAM is practically free, using a 1-2GB RAM Disk may make sense. Can anybody offer any input here?

Have a look over here - http://www.superspeed.com/desktop/ramdisk.php

supports up to 16gigs

RAM limit ?:clap:

What about I-RAM or SSD now?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-RAM

we are talking about software driven RAM drives, not SSD's

[Hazaro]

Have a look over here - http://www.superspeed.com/desktop/ramdisk.php

supports up to 16gigs



we are talking about software driven RAM drives, not SSD's

Oh wow!

Since this is software driven, how does it save the files when your PC shuts off? (Or it doesn't?)

Also you'd need quite a bit of RAM to install a game or something on there, what kind of uses would you use a RAMDISK for?

[Froggy]

I have 2GB of RAM in my PC & when I load TF2 it uses 1.6GB of system RAM & uses 1.7+GB of Virtual Memory. I don't even want to know what Crysis is doing to the virtual memory.

So I am considering adding 2 addl. GB of RAM. That RAM could then be used for virtual memory.

[Froggy]

TY aja that is very interesting!

[aja]

Oh wow!

Since this is software driven, how does it save the files when your PC shuts off? (Or it doesn't?)

Also you'd need quite a bit of RAM to install a game or something on there, what kind of uses would you use a RAMDISK for?

This is mostly intended for servers that are always on since you will lose everything if the power goes off. BUT it does allow you to write to hard drive at each shut down and auto load at start up. It will create a virtual drive in my computer and reserve that amount of RAM for the drive.

They have another interesting proggy called supercache found here - http://www.superspeed.com/desktop/supercache.php

SuperCache breaks the disk I/O bottleneck by using the computer's RAM to hold or contain the most frequently used disk data. This 'container' is referred to as a cache. With SuperCache, as a program sends and receives disk data, the most frequently used data is read from and written to RAM – not the hard drive – thus accelerating the program's performance.

better invest in a UPS

TY aja that is very interesting!

Pleasure :D

[chrispycrunch]

A nice big ram drive would be great for WINRaring files. It sucks to have the compression speed limited by I/O, not CPU.