Any decent free Windows 7 RAMdisk software?

I've been testing out RamDisk Plus for the last week or so and it is a really nice product. I got it so I could utilize all my RAM on Vista 32-bit (I have 8GB installed but due to a faulty motherboard it only registers 6GB). Anyway, RamDisk Plus does allow you to access this lost memory that Windows cannot (or rather will not) see. I thought by putting the sole pagefile on the ramdisk I would get some performance boost. I didn't really see it. Ran all the benchmarks I had, played some games, messed with Photoshop. It all seemed the same to me. I guess in an extreme case it should boost performance, but with my everyday usage it didn't do squat. Furthermore, it made my computer unstable. Practically every time I closed a program it would say it crashed, and when restarting my computer it blue screened a few times. So clearly it is not exactly safe to play with unmanaged areas of the memory. I think if you just used the ramdisk as temporary storage, like a scratch disk, that should work. However using is as virtual RAM (like with a page-file) doesn't seem to be stable. I am going to try VSuite Ramdisk and see if that works any better. They claim to have better compatibility when using unmanaged memory.

EDIT: My bad, I just realized the app crashes were due to another piece of software I installed around the same time. However the blue screens were, in fact, related to RamDisk. They said things like "Memory Management" and "pagefile.sys" on the error screen.
 
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cybereality said:
EDIT: My bad, I just realized the app crashes were due to another piece of software I installed around the same time. However the blue screens were, in fact, related to RamDisk. They said things like "Memory Management" and "pagefile.sys" on the error screen.
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Perhaps this is another problem with your mobo? If you have 8GB sticks, but your BIOS only recognizes 6GB, there could be problem in accessing the unallocated space (it might be different on each boot?). I don't know really, this is all just conjecture.

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I've been using the DataRam RamDisk on Win7 64b Ultimate w/o any problems. Basically, just using it for IE/Chrome/FF temp files and part of the pagefile. This has been more for testing than anything else, since I only had 6GB of ram to begin with - I made 2GB the ram disk (1GB for pagefile, though I have 4GB for pagefile on one of my Raptors - not sure which is used first).

It's been working flawlessly. Unlike a post mentioned earlier, I was able to control the drive letter. You have to format the disk using Windows Disk Manager and assign the drive letter as you normally would.

What I like about the dataram is that it does automatic backups. I'm not too worried about browser cache, but automatic backups (I think I set mine to every 5 mins) is great. Basically, this means you can put your programs on SSD, put temp files on the RAM Disk, and save the status to a HDD storage drive.

The DataRam has an auto-start feature, which keeps it on until you specify to turn it off. I'll have to check how much space the program/service takes in memory - it's probably small. It'd be good to compare that to other like programs as well.
 
I use DataRam RamDisk... seems to work good. It's free and I believe it has a 4 GB limit (I think not totally sure since I only have 4GB total)
 
Xefier said:
To repeat an earlier post, does anyone have any suggestions of what we could use a RAMDisk for to increase performance in Win 7 x64 or reduce wear on our HDs?

So far I see use for pointing temp folders to the RAMDisk, such as:
- Firefox temporary files
- Photoshop temporary files
- BitTorrent downloads
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BOINC projects can see an increase, but I wont go into details to which ones. You can search their forums for that. But, even if it doesn't speed up your crunching, it does spare the hard drive from thrashing.

Many video games if installed into a RAMDisk can see drastic improvement as stated earlier. (WoW was mentioned anyways)

Edit: I would assume Virtual Machines would see an increase as well depending on your OS choice. Especially if it is another Windows install trying to access page files.

Video rendering.


If you host a website with a lot of traffic, this should speed up access times if it is hosted in the RAMDrive. And works quite well for the RAMDisks that will dump the files to physical memory when rebooting and auto-loading on startup like Superspeeds does.

I don't know how effective it was, but I also used a RAMDrive for a while with Ready Boost in Vista to utilize that last bit of ram on a 32bit system that had 4GB installed. I was using Superspeed at that time too.I didn't play with it much, so couldn't tell you if it was really woth it or not.
 
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is there a way to make superspeed ramdisk use JUST the memory above the 4GB instead using that "shadow RAM" region ?

For e.g., say you have 12 GB, I just want Superspeed to use 4 to 12 GB, not the 3.5GB to 4 GB region, is it doable?
 
Interesting thread... I think Ill be trying it out this weekend since i have 16GB total...:cool:
 
I've found that Vsuite RAMdisk is the only free option that does the job for me, as Dataram RAMdisk doesn't support putting the pagefile on it, as when booting, it's not ready in time.

The free version of Vsuite doesn't support IM reservation though, so you need certain options in your BIOS. My Biostar TA790GXBE has a switch to put the IGP memory above or below 4GB and I had to change this to below or I had graphical corruption. It also has a Memory Hole Remapping switch, which I set to Disabled, although I'm not sure that was necessary.

My Gigabyte MA780G-UD3H on the other hand doesn't have either of these options :confused: However, I'm currently using Vsuite OK with it, with a 1.5GB RAMdisk out of a total of 6GB. My IGP is using 512MB and XP reports a total of 2.75GB, so perhaps it's automatically set the IGP memory to below 4GB.
 
doveman said:
I've found that Vsuite RAMdisk is the only free option that does the job for me, as Dataram RAMdisk doesn't support putting the pagefile on it, as when booting, it's not ready in time.
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I did some testing on an XP machine with the Dataram RAMDisk program and it seemed to work fine with having the PageFile on the RAMDisk. Perhaps they've added this capability.
 
heelix said:
I had this link in my bookmarks.

http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives...benchmarked-for-fastest-read-and-write-speed/
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One of the fastest Ramdisk software of that review list is the QSoft RamDrive Enterprise. May not be evident in the comparison, but it can be considered "free" if you read at their website:

"Is there a need to buy the software ? No , one will always be able to update the ramdisk version to a refreshed "Evaluation" version before the actual evaluation version stops working ( expires ). Provided that one makes this update effort , the ramdisk software is free ! However , in reward for the donation , you will be sent the version that never expires. Furthermore, "Full Support ( FS )" users may freely ask for additional support, and they will receive Unlimited Free Updates when available."

Author hard codes the expiration of the download every three months. For example, my evaluation copy is about to expire next July 1st, but I can now update it to the new evaluation expiring october 1st. I have to say my evaluation has been great. fast, reliable and a lot of options.

The donation for a not having to "update" every three months is only $10 (32bits) or $12 (64bits) that is totally reasonable for that useful piece of software.
 
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