[expert][tip] Using a RAMdisk to speed up your HDD - and/or reduce SSD trashing

[hat]

I can't get my temp files to actually go to the ramdisk. Browsing the internet is hellaciously fast but it sucks because it all goes away if I reboot. When I run the CrystalDiskMark utility I get regular hard drive speeds. I set my TEMP and TMP variables to H: (my ramdisk) and I don't get the fast speeds.

[King Wookie]

thx for the guide gents.
Today I have learnt something new.

[shevanel]

Can someone help explain how to set my google chrome temp/cache folder to the ram drive?

the access time is like nothing lol.. super fast reads

[Cuzza]

@lemonadesoda, you're probably right, there are other bottlenecks, in which case I could probably have a RAMdisk 10x faster than the RAM I have and it wouldn't help.

If I had a more powerful system to test with, and a suitable HDD to compare, I probably would. but I don't.

Perhaps a better test would be similar to what I did above, but using webpages with hundreds of small images? Maybe I'll try that next.

TBH it was the speedup you mentioned that interested me the most. I'm not worried about write thrashing - I have a lot of spare disk space so wear levelling should be effective. And I'm a pretty light user, not on the web 8 hours a day or anything, therefore the lifetime of this drive should last me well up to the point where I upgrade it again or sell this notebook. I can certainly see the usefulness of having the cache and temps volatile for wiping at poweroff - for data security / no one can see what pr0n I have my dodgy mates have been looking at . But as I said before, storing a large cache is a bigger priority right now.

Ooooh as typing this I'm reading more thread and considering the idea of putting a few apps on RAMdisk permanently, with the load disk image option. I'll get back to you on that one.

[shevanel]

I rebooted now I can't run, uninstall, repair or reinstall RAMdisk .. says invalid H:\ not found

had to do a system restore to reinstall ramdisk after manual deleting the software

[shevanel]

Originally Posted by hat

I can't get my temp files to actually go to the ramdisk. Browsing the internet is hellaciously fast but it sucks because it all goes away if I reboot. When I run the CrystalDiskMark utility I get regular hard drive speeds. I set my TEMP and TMP variables to H: (my ramdisk) and I don't get the fast speeds.

Try going into H:\ and adding two folders TMP and TEMP.. if you have not already.

[Cuzza]

Here's something irritating that I don't think has been mentioned yet. From the Romex website:

note: Free Edition only supports Windows 2000/XP(32-bit)/2003(32-bit)

IE Romex RAMdisk don't work on Vista/7

I'm on vista and I can't get the Dataram one to work either (that is the non-Beta version) going to try the Beta now. If not, guess I'm stuck with Gavotte, which works fine but is relatively limited.

[shevanel]

In the first page of this thread someone posted the link to the 64bit beta win7

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by Cuzza

Here's something irritating that I don't think has been mentioned yet. From the Romex website:

note: Free Edition only supports Windows 2000/XP(32-bit)/2003(32-bit)

IE Romex RAMdisk don't work on Vista/7

I'm on vista and I can't get the Dataram one to work either (that is the non-Beta version) going to try the Beta now. If not, guess I'm stuck with Gavotte, which works fine but is relatively limited.

dataram works for me, but its buggy. and last page i posted that there is no free x64 for the romex

Originally Posted by shevanel

In the first page of this thread someone posted the link to the 64bit beta win7

not that i can see.

[shevanel]

http://memory.dataram.com/products-a...wnload-ramdisk

thats what im using on WIN 7 64, pick the one at the very top

Read times are rediculous, did you see my screenie up there ^^

[Cuzza]

Originally Posted by shevanel

In the first page of this thread someone posted the link to the 64bit beta win7

Not for Romex. That's the Dataram one which doesn't work for me.

Also, I failed with the Dataram Beta. So I am stuck with Gavot. I was reading the Gavot readme, it goes on about registry parameters, but it's a bit above my head. I'm wondering if I can use the registry parameters to get Gavot to auto-load the Ramdisk image on startup???

Edit: Oops beaten to the post. ignore what i said pre-edit

[lemonadesoda]

If you google Gavotte, you will find (IIRC) it had been abandoned by Mr. Gavotte himself, but some enterprising chinese have added to it. I found later editions built and availble on some .cn websites... but didnt find them to be any more useful... so I stuck the original version into the thread. But if you are interested... go search... you might find something useful, esp. if you can read chinese

[shevanel]

LOL 3.5 GB / second

[xBruce88x]

hmm... i found this little guy that might be of interest... if you can afford it.

64GB 5.25bay ram drive

has a slot for CF to backup data, the built in battery can keep it charged for 4hrs with 16gb. i'm sure someone will find a way to put a larger batterypack in there.

[shevanel]

Even though it benches really fast, I cannot think of any uses for this.

Would this benefit using fraps and taking demos/recordings of gameplay? since it can be written faster?

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by shevanel

Even though it benches really fast, I cannot think of any uses for this.

Would this benefit using fraps and taking demos/recordings of gameplay? since it can be written faster?

in any situation where read/write/IOPS is the limitation, a ramdrive will boost speed.

the problem is FINDING those situations...

[Cuzza]

Turns out it's pretty simple to load the RAMdisk image at startup with Gavotte. Ramdisk.exe accepts an image file as its argument so that the image file can be loaded automatically. I just added the necessary command line to the registry to load on startup. Which I actually found rather complicated because my command line knowledge is extremely rusty, and I had no idea where in the registry to put the command (google helps!) lol

Now to figure out how to auto-save the image on shutdown and I'll be in business....

[shevanel]

Originally Posted by Cuzza

Turns out it's pretty simple to load the RAMdisk image at startup with Gavotte. Ramdisk.exe accepts an image file as its argument so that the image file can be loaded automatically. I just added the necessary command line to the registry to load on startup. Which I actually found rather complicated because my command line knowledge is extremely rusty, and I had no idea where in the registry to put the command (google helps!) lol

Now to figure out how to auto-save the image on shutdown and I'll be in business....

how large is your ramdisk and what will be it's use?

[Cuzza]

Don't know yet, don't have it set up yet. I'm just messing around for fun. When I work out how to get the image autosaved I plan to load some apps on there (such as firefox) to see how much faster it runs.

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by Cuzza

Don't know yet, don't have it set up yet. I'm just messing around for fun. When I work out how to get the image autosaved I plan to load some apps on there (such as firefox) to see how much faster it runs.

1. Program loads
2. click .exe
3. ??????
4. Profit




(yes, it loads before you click it :P)

[shevanel]

meh, the internet browsers do not seem much faster than they already were.


Click this link and scroll down until you see the UT3 pic loading.. for me its just under 4 seconds on ramdisk or hdd.

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showth...t=50940&page=2

[hat]

Well I could only use the second one cause I'm on 64-bit xp and it sucked. It caused a lot of lockups and problems when I tried to stop the driver to change something or to uninstall it, or even to start it (runtime error '481').

Internet browsing was hellasiously fast with this thing though.

I like the ANS-9010 cause it gives you a 64GB big hard drive and it won't forget everything provided the battery is charged. Very, very fast. Imagine loading a game on it...

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Dataram has worked perfectly for me on Windows 7 64, both making it and stopping it. Wonder what's making it not work for others?

[oli_ramsay]

I've been using Dataram, setting a 512MB drive for opera portable, was gonna use it for Songbird (a media player) too but it was a bit buggy.

What other uses do you guys suggest? It speeds up opening Opera and the loading of cached images in opera, but takes ages to startup/shutdown my OS.

Any other ideas to use this cool little tool for?

[lemonadesoda]

Just found another Ramdisk product, and it looks very easy to use/setup for anyone that hasnt tried so far.

http://www.softperfect.com/products/ramdisk/

Softperfect also do an excellent free lan scanner ... which I can definitely recomment.