Virtual PC on RAMdisk?

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bobn4burton

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So I've been reading a little bit about RAMdisks. It seems you can improve the performance of your pc a bit by assigning some key portions of your system on the RAMdisk (pagefile, browser cache, etc.).

Well...then I started wondering...what if a guy got 8 gig of memory (now that its so dirty cheap) and assigned 4-5 gig worth to a RAMdisk. Then install a virtual pc on the RAMdisk? You could use the virtual pc for your normal everyday stuff (browsing, office, etc).

And yes I know there are limitations, problems such as you'd lose all data on ramdisk at shutdown. But you could back up the virtual pc image file to hard drive, and just keep your pc running 24x7. Anyways, assuming the obvious limitations were an acceptable trade-off...

1. Is it even possible to install a virtual pc on a RAMdisk (virtual drive)?
2. Would performance increase a lot (such as loading apps because you would have no hdd accessing)?
3. Has anyone tried anything like this before?
 
1. Is it even possible to install a virtual pc on a RAMdisk (virtual drive)?
2. Would performance increase a lot (such as loading apps because you would have no hdd accessing)?
3. Has anyone tried anything like this before?
Click to expand...

1. Yes
2. Depends on what you're doing, but most likely not. You'll notice fast boot times, but for day to day usage, you probably wont notice much of a difference. The only time you'll notice a big difference is when working with huge files (multi-gigabyte).
3. Yes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PiYgBhAkAM

Here's a nice video showing 'performance': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01zgSiXS794

So, in the end, you'll get amazing theoretical performance, but that's about it. Unless you're working with huge multi-gigabyte Photoshop files.
 
I think OP was talking about software RAMDrives.

I have I-RAM and it works fairly well. Boot times aren't really that impressive because of the time it takes to POST, but apps do start fast and XP feels very snappy. I bought G.Skill DDR 400 instead of the recomended Kingston & other RAM because of price & availablitlity. 4GB on the I-RAM was unstable, so use 2GB which is enough for me, but maybe not for everyone.

I tried various software RAM Drives... Virtual Drive, Cynatek, ramdrive.tk, Qsoft, etc. Most of them didn't work well with Vista 64, which what you need to be running for 8GB anyway. Qsoft worked great with 4GB, but when I upgraded to 8GB I ran into some problems with it and contingeous free memory. I was finally able to get a 6GB RAMDrive up and running which was enough for CoH install since the game itself only uses 2GB. The security software they load on the disc prevented it from working off the RAM drive.

I finally gave up. I had to relax the timings on my RAM to get 8GB to work as well as bump up the voltage. My system was rock solid up until that point and wasn't quite as stable after running 4 sticks of 2GB RAM. I tired some other apps, and yeah, they start up quick, but it wasn't worth it in the end. Games are the only apps I end up waiting on and they're all either too big for a 4GB drive, or don't work with it (easily - YMMV).

So unfortunately, it sounds good in theory but there's a lot of problems in practice. I've been looking at SSD drives. No where near the performance of a software RAM Drive, but still potentially a step up from a Raptor. Access times are low. STR isn't as good, but you could RAID a couple. The problem isn't so much the price, but the fact that it's falling so quickly makes it easy to keep putting off.
 
Yes, I was referring to a software ramdisk, exactly like rabident spoke of.

..sounds like it doesn't work the best for you.

Also sounds like you had some issues running 8 gig of mem...makes me wonder if I should really try to get 8 gig or just stick with 4....
 
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