RamDisk

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fmkenner

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Nov 26, 2011
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IM curious as well i just got 32gb of ram and would like to know how /process of setting one up. i would like to put SWTOR into ram.
 
I'm using ramdisk for web-cache, temporary files, speeding up frequently used applications, etc.
Depending on OS:
- under XP DataRam RamDisk Free
- under Win7 QSoft RAMDrive Enterprise x64

You could take a look at these ramdisk benchmarks: LINK (about 17 ramdisk programs :D )
 
Seb1 said:
I'm using ramdisk for web-cache, temporary files, speeding up frequently used applications, etc.
Depending on OS:
- under XP DataRam RamDisk Free
- under Win7 QSoft RAMDrive Enterprise x64

You could take a look at these ramdisk benchmarks: LINK (about 17 ramdisk programs :D )
Click to expand...

How much ram do you give up to ramdisk? 2GB? Is it worth having? Can you disable it when you want to?
 
I use this. http://www.superspeed.com/desktop/ramdisk.php

4GB out of 24 is dedicated to the ramdrive and is used for browser cache, temp files, uppacking files, etc... Saves wear and tear on the SSD and if your using a mechanical drive you will see a vast improvement in speed when browsing and using the cache.

I've run games from ramdrive as well. Although the benefit is minimal if your already using an SSD. But if your on a mechanical drive then, yes, the performance difference will be incredible.
 
Ok this is my rig:

Asus P8Z68 Deluxe
i7 2600k, overclocked 4.5khz
Thermaltake Frio Cooler
Kingston Hyperx Genisis 16GB ram
OCZ 60GB SSD (For SRT caching HHD)
OCZ 120GB SSD (For OS)
1TB Seagate HHD
Corsiar TX850M
HAF 32 Advanced

I am using a SSD, man that thing is almost instant. I just use this to tinker, learn play games. My first build and all. Was wondering if I installed it could I disable it? Maybe it wouldn't even be worth messing around with it. Wondering if it would be worth incorporating into setting up my SSD. Just thought maybe a worth while thread.
 
does QSOFT Ramdisk Enterprise cost money?

and if i put swtor in 23gig ram drive does it lose it every time i reboot?
 
Filter said:
does QSOFT Ramdisk Enterprise cost money?

and if i put swtor in 23gig ram drive does it lose it every time i reboot?
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From what I understand RamDisk to be, you lose whats in that drive if you shut down or lose power. Unless you image that drive before you shut down. I think some software saves automaticly, but I'm really looking for info myself. I figured someone could help us out with theses questions.
 
Hey all , I use DataRam Ramdisk, they have a free version that lets you use up to 4 gigs of ram and you can purchase a license to remove the limit, I think it was $15.

I have 24gigs of memory and can set it up to 23968 MB. After you set the size of the disk you can go into "Disk Management" in Windows and format+give it a drive letter. after that windows just sees it as a new HD. The RamDisk software has built in image saving so you can save whatever is on it before you reboot, and yes the it will disappear when you reboot, or you can just stop it from the user interface to get the your mem back. You can also set it to load an image automatically on start up so you don't have to fuss with making the drive each time.

I've installed GTA4, BFBC2, couldn't fit WoW on it, it's like 25gigs, argg. Just install a game to it, play it, and save each image to your hardrive for storage when you're finished, most games put save games somewhere in "my documents" so you won't need to worry about saving the image each time you play, just if you change some settings in the game that save to the installation folder you might want to save the image again so you don't have to redo all your settings each time you play.

You can also put temp files, browser cache, and things like that on a RamDisk to speed up windows and save writes to your hardrive, nice if you have an SSD and don't want it being constantly written to.

hope that all makes sense =)
 
fmkenner said:
From what I understand RamDisk to be, you lose whats in that drive if you shut down or lose power. Unless you image that drive before you shut down. I think some software saves automaticly, but I'm really looking for info myself. I figured someone could help us out with theses questions.
Click to expand...

Hi,

This has been a much discussed topic in the Operating System forum. You may have most, if not all, of your questions answered there.

Reading the Dataram RAMDisk User Manual should also provide you with answers.

Hope this helps.

Chuklr
 
Just be warned that setting up a large ramdisk that you want to save to HDD after you finish will lead to longer shutdown times. A lot longer if you go huge.
 
With the little I've tested ram disk, for gaming, I've noticed no improvement over my SSD in load times.
 
So my Mother Board supports 32GB of ram, and Windows home edition supports only 16GB ram, (Ultimate versision supports 32GB). I'm using Home version, so if I upgraded and got 32GB ram, the 16GB that Home version won't use can be used for RamDisk. I guessing here.
 
fmkenner said:
So my Mother Board supports 32GB of ram, and Windows home edition supports only 16GB ram, (Ultimate versision supports 32GB). I'm using Home version, so if I upgraded and got 32GB ram, the 16GB that Home version won't use can be used for RamDisk. I guessing here.
Click to expand...

I don't think it'll show that extra ram to allocate it to the ramdisk without Windows Professional or Ultimate.
 
fmkenner said:
So my Mother Board supports 32GB of ram, and Windows home edition supports only 16GB ram, (Ultimate versision supports 32GB). I'm using Home version, so if I upgraded and got 32GB ram, the 16GB that Home version won't use can be used for RamDisk. I guessing here.
Click to expand...

No. At least not with the Dataram Ramdisk. You will have to upgrade Windows unfortunately.
 
No, it isnt. Windows-32 has the PAE extension that allows more than the standard 4GB address limit. Windows 7 Home is still limited to 16GB max.

You will only see the Advanced tab if (a) you are running a 32-bit version of the Windows OS, (b)
your system has more than 4GB of physical memory installed and (c) your system has Physical
Address Extensions enabled. This tab will allow you to enable a feature of RAMDisk that will allow
you to use memory above the 4GB limit for 32-bit versions of Windows. This feature is not
available for 64-bit versions of Windows because they do not have a 4GB memory limitation.
The Advanced tab shows you how much memory RAMDisk has detected above the 4GB limit,
which is unused by 32-bit Windows.
Click to expand...

unused being the key word. The 16GB limit still applies for how much Windows 7 Home will recognise (and map IO addresses for, which is required for a ramdisk).
 
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Ok I see, thanks for clearing that up. I was seeing what I wanted to. I was reading about it being a Kernel driver, could make your system unstable. Do you find it usefull or not worth the trouble?
 
Question, With my 16 gigs of ram, would there be a point to make an 8 gig ram drive and set it as the page file location? Would that increase system speeds?

As for the other suggestions, temp files and the like, how much space does that generally take and where are the options to set that in windows?

Thank you
 
Elf_Boy said:
Question, With my 16 gigs of ram, would there be a point to make an 8 gig ram drive and set it as the page file location? Would that increase system speeds?

As for the other suggestions, temp files and the like, how much space does that generally take and where are the options to set that in windows?

Thank you
Click to expand...

A few programs use the page file when they have enough ram. Those programs would speed up very slightly.

If you plan to make a ram drive for other reasons, you could experiment and set up a small page file on it. Even 512 MB would probably be enough. I wouldn't bother doing it for only that purpose unless you know a program you use a lot writes to the page file a lot even when ram is available.
 
SuperCache5 is the way to go. on my x79 system with 32GB of ram, I'm using an 8GB cache to speed up my mechanical steam games drive. It will do reads/writes at well over 2GB/sec. My main drive is a RAID 0 Corsair Force GT setup and it will out perform it in most cases, on cached data obviously.
 
Sprayingmango said:
SuperCache5 is the way to go. on my x79 system with 32GB of ram, I'm using an 8GB cache to speed up my mechanical steam games drive. It will do reads/writes at well over 2GB/sec. My main drive is a RAID 0 Corsair Force GT setup and it will out perform it in most cases, on cached data obviously.
Click to expand...
I'm using ASUS Z68 Deluxe board, I thing the SuperCache5 is the same as their SRT technology. It uses a small SSD to cache a larger HHD. From what I'm gathering it seems RamDisk just allows programs to be used in ram thus allowing them to preform better, faster. You lose that drive, or everything you put there when you power down. I'm using a 120GB SSD for my OS, and a smaller SSD for caching my HHD. Everything seems almost instant when I run it. Was wondering if RamDisk would be worth the trouble maybe for gaming, etc... I'm reading that this is a Kernel mode drive which could make your system unstable without the right support. I'm still on the fence with this, but I built my system to learn and tinker abit. A few tools in the tool box is nice, but being a kernel mode driver sets me back abit. I could just re-install windows if I didn't like it, but wanted a few opinions before I bothered.
 
fmkenner said:
I'm using ASUS Z68 Deluxe board, I thing the SuperCache5 is the same as their SRT technology. It uses a small SSD to cache a larger HHD. From what I'm gathering it seems RamDisk just allows programs to be used in ram thus allowing them to preform better, faster. You lose that drive, or everything you put there when you power down. I'm using a 120GB SSD for my OS, and a smaller SSD for caching my HHD. Everything seems almost instant when I run it. Was wondering if RamDisk would be worth the trouble maybe for gaming, etc... I'm reading that this is a Kernel mode drive which could make your system unstable without the right support. I'm still on the fence with this, but I built my system to learn and tinker abit. A few tools in the tool box is nice, but being a kernel mode driver sets me back abit. I could just re-install windows if I didn't like it, but wanted a few opinions before I bothered.
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For gaming? eh, it would speed up load times but that's about it.
 
You seem to be really caught up with the fact that it uses a "kernel mode driver." I would imagine any and all similar software would work the same way. It has to be able to manage it's own memory without Windows interfering for it to function. If it crashes your computer, then uninstall it or just don't run it again. I personally never had a problem with it.

I have been leaning towards using SuperCache5 with my current install instead of a ram drive. It differs from SRT in that it uses ram, and allows a lot of control including setting up customized delayed writes. It adds risk in that if your computer crashes while you have delayed write enabled, you lose any cashed data that had not yet been written to the disk. If I decide to use it, I will probably use it with my SSD to speed it up even more.

Ram disk software creates a new drive that you would have to install (or copy and hard link) your software on to make use of it for a program. I primarily used it as a cache drive. I had all my temp files on it for windows, firefox, photoshop, etc. I tried moving some smaller games to it, but it really didn't seem worth it since it's not going to help except when loading new data. Using it for temp files also means you don't have to worry about losing any data from it when you reboot.
 
Glad I stumbled on this thread, I'll be giving the QSOFT app a shot. I have an SR-2 with 48gb of ram so its going to be interesting finding the best ways I could use this.
 
I think I'm going to try it too. I'm working on keeping my system stable with my OCing. Seems to be coming along but there always seems like some kind of quirk comes up. Its always nice to see what ppl are using, maybe what to stay away from also. I have 16GB ram so I think I can spare abit.
 
Is it possible to boot windows (non virtual machine) off of a RAM drive?
 
ZodaEX said:
Is it possible to boot windows (non virtual machine) off of a RAM drive?
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Technically it may be possible, but since you would have to copy an image of windows to the RAM and then boot from that there would be no benefits.
 
visionviper said:
Technically it may be possible, but since you would have to copy an image of windows to the RAM and then boot from that there would be no benefits.
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But id imagine that once windows was booted off ram it would be faster. Ramdisks bypass the measly speed limitations of sata3. And even the best ssds only have write speeds of 200mb/second vs the 20gb/second writes that RAM disks offer. Not to mention lower seek times.
 
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There is an old PCI card that uses external power to keep the data in your ram drive when you power off. Technically you could use that for your OS, but I think it was capped at 2 or 4 GB, and it was old. Maybe DDR ram, but possible even SDRAM. I think there have been a few more recent ones that went into a drive bay, but I think those connected though IDE.

I don't know what ram drive you found with 20GB/sec, but I'd like to give it a try if it's real.
 
asyork said:
There is an old PCI card that uses external power to keep the data in your ram drive when you power off. Technically you could use that for your OS, but I think it was capped at 2 or 4 GB, and it was old. Maybe DDR ram, but possible even SDRAM. I think there have been a few more recent ones that went into a drive bay, but I think those connected though IDE.

I don't know what ram drive you found with 20GB/sec, but I'd like to give it a try if it's real.
Click to expand...

We are discussing software ram disks. The one your talking about is a hardware ram disk. I know those are usually bootable.
 
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