RAM DRIVE

[rahul babaria]

How to set up a ram drive, how much ram is required, Are there any real benefits, also can it be done easily on a normal cpu or is some other hardware required ?

 

[enzo matrix]

Are you referring to a RAM Disk? If so, what operating system are you using and what are the rest of your system components etc?

 

[rahul babaria]

No I am referring to installing your OS on the Ram rather than hard disc

 

[13thmonkey]

how big is your OS installation, i'd say 20Gb would be normalish, so you'd need 20Gb of ram plus what ever you need to run the system another 4 say? you'd also have to load the OS into the ram diskas a part of the startup, and then run the os from the ram disk in the remaining ram. Enough ram would cost a fortune. And it would be tricky and technical to implement, probably not worth it, loading times would probably be increased by having to copy all 20Gb (100Mb/s = 200s) to the RAM disk, and copy it back again upon shutdown (100Mb/s = 200s), whereas normally only the bits that are needed are moved to ram as required.

else you could look at one of these:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/16255

or similar where battery backup ram is constantly held with the OS loaded.... but the box is expensive never mind the ram.

 

[eriko]

RAM drives are the bomb.

I use one for gaming, and the games run so fast its funny on some games.

Here: http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk/download-ramdisk

It free to register, and registering allows you to create >4GB RAM drives.

Try running any disk benchmark program, it leaves ANYTHING in the dust.

Now, if you figure out how to load an OS into a RAM drive, you are a better man than me....

But enjoy...

 

[13thmonkey]

how do you get the game installed on the ram drive?

 

[randomizer]

RAM drives have pros and cons.

Pros.

■ They are fast. No really, they are fast. If you want to have extreme disk benchmarks scores they are the way to go. But as far as improving performance goes you are unlikely to find that a RAM disk does much for you in the real world. Storing browser caches on the RAM disk will speed up page rendering from cache though, so that's a good thing.

■ They are more secure than storing data on hard disks. Want to get rid of your personal data from web browsing without leaving any traces? A RAM disk can do this for you. After removing power all data stored on it is permanently lost unless you dump it to the hard disk at shut down.

Cons

■ If you use it for, say, games, you'll need to have the system copy the game data from a HDD to the RAM disk after every boot. This can take an extremely long time depending on how fast your HDD is and how much data is being copied. For web browser caches this is not an issue as they are recreated whenever lost.

■ They have a low capacity. Unless you run a server board with 24GB of RAM you're not going to fit much onto your RAM Disk. As far as OSs go you could probably fit Windows 9x or most Linux distributions on a 4GB or larger RAM disk, but forget any newer Windows OS as you probably don't have nearly enough RAM.

You'd be better off with an SSD. It's not quite as fast, but does not have the most of the downsides of RAM disks. As it is permanent storage you'll want to use the Ram disk for securely destroying browser caches on reboot/shut down still. You only need a small RAM disk for this. I have no idea how you'd boot from a RAM Disk. You'd need to copy all of the OS data from a HDD to the RAM Disk at boot or have a RAM Disk that is constantly powered (risky as a power outage means you kiss your OS goodbye).

 

[amnotanoobie]

how do you get the game installed on the ram drive?

Technically it should just appear as any other drive on Windows. The issue is that upon shutdown, the ramdisk disappears along with its contents. For a game to work, you'd need to copy the contents back to the the ramdisk upon booting windows.

Unless the OP is planning to keep his PC running 24/7, the ramdisk would need to copy from the hard drive upon boot. This would probably make the less than 1-minute boot a 10~20 minute affair.

 

[13thmonkey]

Technically it should just appear as any other drive on Windows. The issue is that upon shutdown, the ramdisk disappears along with its contents. For a game to work, you'd need to copy the contents back to the the ramdisk upon booting windows.

Unless the OP is planning to keep his PC running 24/7, the ramdisk would need to copy from the hard drive upon boot. This would probably make the less than 1-minute boot a 10~20 minute affair.

I've read the manual for the link above, and it auto loads/updates/saves an image of the disk should make it nearly transparent, might give it a go over the weekend if the rugby doesn't get in the way.

I'd used ramdisks back in the day Amiga and PC, but only for data and not programs, the imaging mechanism seems to be a good idea to me.

 

[rahul babaria]

Best answer selected by Rahul Babaria.