Ram Disks?

[jaytrinitron]

Hi Everyone,
I currently have 8gb of ram on my i5 desktop, and I am going to upgrade to 12gb. While perusing the internet yesterday, I read about ram disks, which are pieces of ram that act like disk drives for your computer. My question is, if I put my temp folder and page file on a ram disk, (Right now they are on a samsung 830 256gb ssd) would my computer speed up? All the articles I read were quite old, and what I'm asking is whether using a ram disk for my temp folder an page file would really speed up a modern computer. If I do make a ram disk, I'lll have 1 4gb ram disk and the rest will be regular ram.

 

[GhislainG]

With 12GB of memory, the pagefile should rarely be used. You'll see no performance gains if you have an SSD.

 

[jaytrinitron]

Thanks, but what about the temp folder? And I read this article: http://lifehacker.com/5560281/move-your-caches-to-a-ram-disk-to-reduce-wear-on-ssds
This basically states that moving my temp folder to the ram disk will reduce the read/write wear on the ssd. That said, the article is quite old, so does this still apply, as in, is the change in the wear on my samsung ssd significant?

 

[J_E_D_70]

Looks like one way to measure lifespan is "(capacity*p/e cycle rating)/amount written per day" and worst case p/e appears to be 3000 cycles. Guessing your formatted capacity is around 230GB. Assuming you do some insane amount of writing, say 100GB/day every single day, then... (230*3000)/100 = 18.9 *years*. Effectively, it doesn't matter where your pagefile or temp folders are if you plan to replace the SSD in a reasonable amount of time.

Please double-check my math...

On a side note, I turned my pagefile off completely with no ill effects to date.

 

[nikorr]

Hi Everyone,
I currently have 8gb of ram on my i5 desktop, and I am going to upgrade to 12gb. While perusing the internet yesterday, I read about ram disks, which are pieces of ram that act like disk drives for your computer. My question is, if I put my temp folder and page file on a ram disk, (Right now they are on a samsung 830 256gb ssd) would my computer speed up? All the articles I read were quite old, and what I'm asking is whether using a ram disk for my temp folder an page file would really speed up a modern computer. If I do make a ram disk, I'lll have 1 4gb ram disk and the rest will be regular ram.

If it is on SSD, you will not notice any speed up with temp folder on it.

 

[nikorr]

You can try it, but you will see for yourself.

It would be only good on the first gen. of SSD's as they don't have lifespan of the latest ones.

 

[jaytrinitron]

Alright thanks.

 

[nikorr]

Try it.

What is the benefit?

In a word: SPEED!

Most users use RAMDisk to speed up applications like:
Browsers cache
RAM Cache for the HDD or SSD
Photoshop (scratch disk)
Databases
Internet Explorer cache for faster web surfing
Audio and Video editing
CAD programs
Software compilers
Speeding up CD duplication
Games
SETI processing
TEMP files
Swap space
Web server cache
Custom applications with high I/O, high bandwidth, or high security requirements

When I transfer 2GB file from the RAMdisc to my 2TB HDD it starts high around 1.2GB/s the transfer speed.

Than it goes down of course, but it takes -> one, two done!

 

[jaytrinitron]

Are you sure it will realy speed up games?
And if so, what files should be on the ramdisk? (I can't put the entire game since it's only 4 gb)

 

[nikorr]

Well, I don't play games. But when u play and u need some CD or DVD in the DVD drive, create IMG file and mount that in the RAM disk.

But for games I cannot give much of the advice, since I don't play them.

To get max benefit, than installing game on it must help, but u need large RAM disk.

Or move the cache from the game if there is any.

Sorry, don't know with games.

I play old Millipede or Commando and such : ) If I do.

 

[nikorr]

Oh, and Sims too. lol

 

[jaytrinitron]

Alright. Thanks for the info.

 

[nikorr]

Cool. Good luck!

It excels with small programs too. Or portable ones.

The system is freed of thinking about them running, as they use minimum resources.