Ram-disk Boot Drive System build.

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I want to know how to create a ram-disk boot drive in the bios of the motherboard, because consumer motherboards can support 128GB of ram with DDR4 (might as well be DDR$ cause its cost lol ). Reason... honestly not many:
- it would be the fastest drive on the market
- not many people are willing to do it so I want to be able to say I can and have.
- Lastly and most importantly, I want to make use of my current motivation I have to actually better myself and learn something.

Yes, I am prepared to not save anything, and am prepared to load everything, to the drive every time I boot.

Specifically I would like to:
- Create a ram disk boot drive that is available in bios every time I boot from no power.
- to save enough files and drivers to the BIOS (I would prefer this), or a USB stick if absolutely necessary, so the boot drive will be able to access the wifi adapter and download remaining OS files from Microsoft (kinda like the free OS upgrade to Win 10)
- to run without any other USB, SSD, or HDD assistance.

Current design considerations:
I am looking to do Online gaming (like Iracing and other games I can download from STEAM)
I don't have a computer now so I am open to suggestions of parts and components but I'm really after instruction on setting up the boot drive.

That said I plan to run:
- ASUS ROG/TUF motherboard
- Corsair Dominator DDR4 Ram
- Corsair PSU that maintains power when power goes out.
- CPU grew up on AMD but can go Intel
- GPU grew up on NVidia but can go Radeon
- Looking for liquid cooling
- Monitor: Oculus Rift or similar
- Peripherals as necessary
- gaming software as necessary.

Necessary drivers will either be downloaded or save to USB stick for use when needed.

Also I plan to sleep the computer when not in use and to restart it possible if and when updates are required. only to time I plan to shutdown is when power goes out for extended period or I want a fresh start.


 
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jimmysmitty

jimmysmitty

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There is currently no way, that I know of, to create a bootable RAM Disk that would be available in the BIOS. RAM is volatile, meaning with no power all data is flushed.

Intel is working on 3D Xpoint which will include what are called NVDIMMs, Non-Volatile DIMMS. At that point we will be able to but for now it wont be possible.
 
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canadianvice

canadianvice

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I don't want to piss on your dreams, but I hope you realize how massively inconvenient this is going to be in practice. Plus, I don't think many BIOS' even support something like that, because it's very non-standard, to say nothing of complexity. These also tend to run as a layer ABOVE the operating system, meaning they can't have an OS on them (can't contain itself, basically).

Have you considered just getting a really solid SSD? For the cost of RAM you'd probably be doing yourself a favour.

For in-OS ramdisks, you can just download and install the program by that name. The paid version supports basically any size as I understand.

There is such a thing as a hardware ram disk, which is basically a card for a bunch of RAM with additional power to stay on when the PC "isn't". With that said, they cost upwards of $2500 + RAM. however, as you may expect, this causes saturation of the interface very, very quickly. The only thing it means is basically 0 seek times.
 
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canadianvice - I have compared cost of SSD's to the ram and your right it would be a lot more cost effective. But seeing as I already know how to raid SSD's together that challenge wouldn't prove to be very educational.

jimmysmitty - Would you happen to know what is going on in this video then https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va3PmHZwUtQ
It doesn't have audio, but I see a couple of times where the bios shows the drive up and running but (having only watched it once and because its win 7 not 10) I am having a hard time knowing whats exactly far-in-out Inc is doing with all the file coping and pasting going on. Would this be possible in Win 10?

utroz - While I am familiar with NVRam drive like this http://www.all1.com.tw/en/CDD101Storage%20Turbo.html I would have to see if the bus it connects to (PCIe?) would or would not over saturate especially if there is a graphics card competing with it. It still wouldnt teach me what I want to know.
 
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jimmysmitty

jimmysmitty

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The video you linked is interesting but it is not quite the same as what I would think of. It is using a RAM disk however it is also using the Windows VHD feature, also something used in VMWare which is a Virtual system host much like Hyper-V and a VHD is a disk made for the virtual system on a server that uses VMWare or Hyper-V.

What this is doing is the VHD is stored on either an internal HDD or a USB drive along with Grub4DOS and another driver. This allows you to boot and shut down as if it were non-volatile because any changes will get saved to the VHD on the existing HDD or USB drive.

I guess if you are willing to do the work you could try that but it might still have limitations, normally VHD will only use a generic driver for GPU and such, i.e. you wont be able to use whatever GPU you have setup in your system like you would with a normal RAM Disk.

This video talks about the native VHD support in Windows:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoGfIi_zoUw
 
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G

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I understand a bit more now. Thanks jimmysmitty I will have to do some more research on the topic and see what happens. Ill post more info as I come across it and if I need clarification on something.

 
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jimmysmitty

jimmysmitty

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I did a bit more digging on it. So what is going on is pretty much the same for the VHD, that would be saved on a hard drive or a USB drive. What happens is Grub4DOS is loading the memory and then the FiraDISK is the additional driver that creates a RAM Disk and is loaded with Grub4DOS and the virtual RAM disk size and partition info is then saved with the VHD on the host storage option.

As I said this is a way to create a RAM Disk but it still would require a host drive to store the files and VHD on. In essence you wouldn't be able to create just a RAM Disk and have no sort of other storage in the system.

I would think in the next 5-10 years we will see NVDIMMS become more prevalent and will begin to see the decline in storage that is not part of the RAM structure.
 
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jimmysmitty

jimmysmitty

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So in essence similar to the other method but uses Ubuntu instead of Windows for it. I think this could be similar to using an Ubuntu Live CD to load an Ubuntu image into RAM to mess with it without installing it and screwing things up.

Would work but it is still not a NVRAM based setup. Again in the next 5-10 years NVDIMMs will become more common place (Intel is supposed to have support for NVDIMMS on the Z200 series chipset for Kaby Lake) and will do what you want better and probably easier.
 
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