RAM Disk

I am now officially running SETi from a RAM disk, A virtual hard drive located entirely within RAM.

The benefits are pretty obvious: 100x faster throughut, 100x lower latency.

Although I doubt it will noticeably increase my output, it was a fun experiment (although I don't think it will be fun for the 50 or so people that lost their wingman... sorry if that's any of you guys!)

I'm thinking of implementing this on my webserver to contain the SQL databases and web files to cut down on loading times and HD wear (given that they are ancient hard drives, I'm expecting them to go at any time, but raid5 FTW)

I can see this for tests and cache performance increases but holding the SQL DB and web files seems ultra risky to me, you'd loose everything on power loss or restart.

That's what I was worried about too, until I saw that you can set the program to back up the RAM disk every x minutes, and reload the saved image back into RAM at system startup.

So what are the results of this RAM disk? How's the testing going?

I didnt think SETI actually used the HDDs that often.. but I guess it couldnt hurt to see how it went Id be interested to know myself

Seti is hardly IO bound. If my memory is right it only accesses the disk a few times a minute. Ram disks work great for some things though. A swap disk for photoshop comes to mind.