How to place files on RAM!

F

feelingshorter

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 9, 2004
Messages
216
I read somewhere long ago on a tweak website that there was a way to place static files on your ram. Basicaly, lets say you can load up aim or steam or internet explorer on ram. So that when you boot up your computer, the files are already there and there is no delay when you open up the files. Anyone know if this can be done? I remember reading somewhere that it can but when i reformatted my computer, i dint bother to backup my links so hehe...

If this cant be done, mind me. I am not really good with computers at all.

EDIT: i got 512 megs of pc2700 samsung ram btw (if that information is needed by anyone)
 
I have no idea how to do it, but search around for ramdrive. I know it can be done, though I'm not sure that 512mbs of RAM is enough to make it useful.
 
yeha, i read an artice from like 1999 or soemthing about making RAM drives... he installed a game to it and it ran amazigngly fast.... search for "RAM drive" on google or something...
 
I remember back in the old days on a mac you could turn some of your ram into a drive that appears on your desktop, it was a system feature. You could drag software into it and run it from there, but of course restarting you'd lost everything in there.

I wonder if Mac OS still has that feature without thirdparty software.

Imagine if you had 4gigs of ram on your PC and turned 3gigs of that into a ram drive, then putting Far Cry on that to play the game off of :)
 
There is no way to have stuff in dynamic ram before you boot a computer. Dynamic ram needs to constantly be refreshed or it will not retain the data stored in it. Therefore it constantly needs power and it needs the memory controller to refresh the memory. That is why static ram is so much faster than dynamic ram - it doesn't need this refresh cycle. If the computer is off then the memory subsystem isn't getting power and it cannot refresh the ram. Supposing we take care of that and somehow isolate the memory subsystem and power it and get it to refresh the dynamic ram, we have a problem with the operating system. You would have to modify the memory handling and allocation routines, which are a pretty fundamental part of the operating system. Then we get into paging files and whatnot. All in all, today's generic PCs are just not designed for something like what you suggest. It would take a redesigning of the cpu, the chipset, and the operating system, along with other various subsystems both in hardware and software.

Now if you are just talking about ramdrives then I don't see how that could possibly help in your situation. You would make the ramdrive, copy the program to the ramdrive, and then execute the program, which would then get loaded into ram. That is just redundant and would make load times even longer. Ramdrives are beneficial when you have data that you need to access often, but not for programs that you execute and are then loaded.
 
i see...512 megs is small... does anyone know if i can put 2 different types of ram speed into my computer?

Like lets say use 512 megs of pc2700 along with 256 megs of pc2100? (sorry for more newb questions.)
 
Originally posted by feelingshorter
i see...512 megs is small... does anyone know if i can put 2 different types of ram speed into my computer?

Like lets say use 512 megs of pc2700 along with 256 megs of pc2100? (sorry for more newb questions.)
Click to expand...

Yup, but you'd hafta run them both at PC2100. Unless it's decent 2100 and if you put enough volts through it it might run at 2700...
 
So if you wanted to install a game on a RAM drive to boot games faster, you would have to install the game everytime you turned on your computer? That's not worth the effort. Unless you installed the game on the HD and then a script ran every time you powered on that took the files from one directory in your HD and copied them to ram.. but this could take a while, and would only really benefit the hardcore LAN gamer.


I read somehting a long tiem ago about a PCI based RAM solution that basically took a bunch of ram, slapped it on a PCI card, and gave it mem addresses. I'm still sure this would erase itself everytime the computer was turned off though. Worth a google.
 
Well there are solid state drives that use memory chips rather than magnetic medium. These typically hook up to either a drive bus or directly to the pci bus. They are accessed like a regular drive, not like memory, so you can just plug it in, copy files over to it and go. Most of them have batteries in them that keep the data while the computer is off. This would get you closer to your speed goal, but you still have to retrieve the files from the SSD and execute them, which puts them in system memory.
 
ok thanks for all the help but your missing the point. I dont want load huge files into my ram. Maby just some CS maps, that way when a new map begins, it loads faster. Or ill load small programs like AIM or IE or Opera.
 
There are a couple commercial programs that will create drives out of part of your RAM. Microsoft released a demo driver for Windows 2000 back for the initial release of the 2000 DDK. It didn't work on XP without hacking it up a bit. I've got it here somewhere but I can't find the damn disc. To be honest, I didn't find it terribly useful on the desktop because most of the programs that I run are far to large to stick two copies in RAM (one for storage, one for running the app) when you've only got 512-1024MB. I did use it on a web server for a while though. I had it set to copy the contents of the web server to the RAM Drive on startup. The server didn't get nearly as bogged down as it did when serving the pages from the hard drive.

EDIT: Microsoft still has the RAM Disk driver available for download. They have updated the code and now they tell you how to get it to work on Windows XP without having to experiment on your own.

257405 - FILE: Ramdisk.sys Sample Driver for Windows 2000
 
Originally posted by litkaj
There are a couple commercial programs that will create drives out of part of your RAM. Microsoft released a demo driver for Windows 2000 back for the initial release of the 2000 DDK. It didn't work on XP without hacking it up a bit. I've got it here somewhere but I can't find the damn disc. To be honest, I didn't find it terribly useful on the desktop because most of the programs that I run are far to large to stick two copies in RAM (one for storage, one for running the app) when you've only got 512-1024MB. I did use it on a web server for a while though. I had it set to copy the contents of the web server to the RAM Drive on startup. The server didn't get nearly as bogged down as it did when serving the pages from the hard drive.

EDIT: Microsoft still has the RAM Disk driver available for download. They have updated the code and now they tell you how to get it to work on Windows XP without having to experiment on your own.

257405 - FILE: Ramdisk.sys Sample Driver for Windows 2000
Click to expand...

thanks, i had problems finding that on the internet. Since most people dont use this. Most of the articles written are like years old except for that one which has update for how to use on windows XP. I decided to not even mess with that. I think ill just go "grab" me some new ram from local microcenter.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top