Anybody install their OS onto RAM, recently?

[kyij]

I had an idea, even though it defiantly is not a new one, but to install the OS to the ram. So I was searching old threads and some gave some good ideas, though I noticed all of the posts were older.., either before SSD's / DDR2 times.. (at least before price drops)

So I am wondering if it is possible to install something like W7 / W8 onto the RAM, like 4x8GB sticks where you would still have enough RAM for the system (W7 in 7GB)

One of the problems seemed that when turning on / off the computer people at to use a CD burner to save temp files, due to being on the RAM, but with SSD's, why not have everything else on one, such as a 240GB SATA3 drive.

So is there already a forum with this already... or is there something I am completely missing?

Thanks!

 

[Woomack]

Almost noone is making that lately just because SSD are really fast and it's easier to run system on SSD than in RAM.
I was thinking about it and I would try if I had info how to move full Win7/2008 into the ram in the fast way.
Win7 = ~12GB so on 16GB RAM that is quite cheap now, you can run almost everything. I was actually thinking to change my 12GB to 24GB RAM in my daily pc , I was just looking for good reason to do it ...

 

[kyij]

Almost noone is making that lately just because SSD are really fast and it's easier to run system on SSD than in RAM.
I was thinking about it and I would try if I had info how to move full Win7/2008 into the ram in the fast way.
Win7 = ~12GB so on 16GB RAM that is quite cheap now, you can run almost everything. I was actually thinking to change my 12GB to 24GB RAM in my daily pc , I was just looking for good reason to do it ...

Yeah, I just went to newegg and they have 16gb ddr3 for $65..

Also I have been searching around some more and found this post that seems to have A LOT.. Using a RAMdisk to speed up your HDD - and/or reduce SSD trashing

On the post someone mentioned they should add an li-ion battery to the ram, but even an extra one / battery pack "prongs" (like an extra feature) onto a motherboard would do the job..

Also looking at the post they mentioned dataram ramdisk software which can load files such as games and etc on bootup to your ramdisk and save on poweroff (>.> though Id hate for a power failure obviously)

The second to last page of posts someone mentioned that they had bought 24gb of ram and was planning to play around in their workstation but never reposted back and the thread is dead by >1year..

Well to say the least I am very tempted to buy some ram and also very tempted to at least try a partition for xp and see how everything does on it before blowing some money

 

[Woomack]

I was testing it on XP some years ago but never on Win7.
If I find some time then I will try it. I have some spare GB of RAM laying around so just need some free time and free board for tests.
I'm curious how fast can run RAM disk on IB since I can make my memory to run at about 25-30 GB/s

 

[kyij]

I was testing it on XP some years ago but never on Win7.
If I find some time then I will try it. I have some spare GB of RAM laying around so just need some free time and free board for tests.

Alright, well I am doing xp right now and will see myself. Though for 7 I will need at least 8gb more since I could probably boot ubuntu from a cd to same some of my current 8 gb and do a ~12gb partition..

--edit--

Alright so I downloaded ramdisk and made a 4gb partition and then I am using vmware to create a virtual pc within that (windows xp sp3) .. I went and downloaded crystaldiskmark though I was disappointed to see my read speeds ~430MB/s and write @650MB/s.. So then on Windows 8 (the regular partition on my SSD) and tested the 4GB partition of ram only to get the 4500MB/s + speeds.

I am wondering if it is vmware that is bottlenecking me or something else? Thanks!

 

[gangaskan]

Alright, well I am doing xp right now and will see myself. Though for 7 I will need at least 8gb more since I could probably boot ubuntu from a cd to same some of my current 8 gb and do a ~12gb partition..

--edit--

Alright so I downloaded ramdisk and made a 4gb partition and then I am using vmware to create a virtual pc within that (windows xp sp3) .. I went and downloaded crystaldiskmark though I was disappointed to see my read speeds ~430MB/s and write @650MB/s.. So then on Windows 8 (the regular partition on my SSD) and tested the 4GB partition of ram only to get the 4500MB/s + speeds.

I am wondering if it is vmware that is bottlenecking me or something else? Thanks!

install the tools? might make a difference.


also, didnt OCZ and other companies make a express slot ramdisk that never took off?

 

[kyij]

install the tools? might make a difference.


also, didnt OCZ and other companies make a express slot ramdisk that never took off?

Tools did automatically install.. anyway I was trying to free up the 1.5gb I had left and the whole comp turned off unexpectedly, it wiped and since I had turned off auto save so I lost that install..

Yes on the older posts I seen them talking about the express slot drives, though I believe the slots only get a slight advantage over sata 3 but nothing like the actual ram!

 

[Jagged_Steel]

I use RAMdisk quite often, but I have never tried loading the OS onto it, I can foresee some issues there. I suspect that going from my 500 MB/s SSD to RAMdisk for the OS would be really hard to notice. The main thing I use RAMdisk for is working on some older smaller games that I mod and make maps for. By loading the whole program into RAMdisk I can fire up games like Railroad Tycoon 3 in literally a flash, where it takes maybe 10 seconds from SSD. When working on mods/maps you have to test things repeatedly, so this is a big timesaver, and of course just generally cool to see stuff being so zippy. I am currently building the wife a Graphic Design rig. I showed her how putting texture files on RAMdisk allows for instant "bubbly" browsing through thousands of photos and she loved it, so I am putting together a system using my old 555 and this current M5A97 EVO mobo with 12 GB of RAM and all SSD drives. Good Luck with your experiments with using RAMdisk for your OS, I am interested in seeing what you are able to achieve.

 

[kyij]

Well I am currently stuck.. I believe the speeds were slow since in VMware the settings were splitting up the OS files and using a "space" rather then the whole drive.

Though when I goto the adv setting set it for a physical drive (3 (ramdisk)) then it only gives me an error saying the disk is currently in use. --When I do the trick to edit the vmx (since I am using vmware v8) then neither XP nor ubuntu can see the drive.

When I dismount it / get rid of drive letter then vmware then I get an error "A required file is not found" since I got rid of the file path..

Ideas?

--EDIT--

Got it to work, I saved the location of the system files to my SSD and then used the drive to install the OS, will post back later with results since I have to leave.

--EDIT--

I tested the drive in the disk utility of ubuntu (see picture, and it only let me test the read speed)
Then I retried XP since ubuntu looked promising, only to get the same thing from before (picture)

Any more ideas? And I know I was talking about doing 7, though I want to see some promising results before I buy ram for just a random idea..

 

[saicomp77]

[1] http://hirensbootcd.org

here's a boot disk which boots from cd or usb drive allocates memory for xp or w7 and loads everything without need of hard disk

so study it and manage for your more memory