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

[Velvet Wafer]

ah,now i feel like im back in school

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

Or, yeah, uh read post #4

 

[Velvet Wafer]

lol, now that was easily overseeable

 

[Asylum]

Looks interesting.
Ill check it out.

 

[Asylum]

Heres my results from creating a Ramdisc.
Man this thing is fast.

 

[Cuzza]

So I tried some browser benchmarks to see if the RAMdisk had sped firefox up at all.

No really appreciable gain there (about 1.5%)

And just for kicks, Sunspider java benchmark

Not that I was expecting anything, but no difference. (I suppose it doesn't need a cache)

 

[Cuzza]

Also just for kicks, I installed Opera directly onto the RAMdisk. WHOAR does that load up quickly! Click the icon and BAM the window appears. Compared to Firefox and IE which take 2-3 seconds

EDIT: Just to be fair, tried Opera installed on the SSD as well. It loads up much faster than IE and Firefox, but not as fast as it did from the RAMdisk

 

[lemonadesoda]

The (possible) problem with your benchmarks is that they are 99% based on testing the rendering speed of the browser engine, scripts, activx, flash... and NOTHING to do with disk access, saving and loading hundreds of gifs fpgs htmls cookies etc. And therefore the results are irrelevant to the "browser experience"

 

[Cuzza]

The (possible) problem with your benchmarks is that they are 99% based on testing the rendering speed of the browser engine, scripts, activx, flash... and NOTHING to do with disk access.

Just what I was thinking. Are there any other tests I could run?

 

[Tartaros]

Has anyone tried to use ramdisk as pagefile? I have curiosity..

 

[Mussels]

Has anyone tried to use ramdisk as pagefile? I have curiosity..

its pointless.

most programs only use the pagefile when you run out of ram, so using ram to make the pagefile results in the pagefile being used sooner (which is ram)... instead of just using the ram in the first place.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

someone with a massive chunk of ram should install a game like crysis on a ramdisk and see how it loads / performs because if its good id use it to install a game and run it and just save the save files elsewhere

 

[Mussels]

someone with a massive chunk of ram should install a game like crysis on a ramdisk and see how it loads / performs because if its good id use it to install a game and run it and just save the save files elsewhere

games run ridiculously awesome.

i got bored and ran a few games from a 4GB ram drive with 4GB left for everything else... load times are cool


lemonadesoda:

its really, REALLY important that you state what OS's you tested with. Last time i did this, a program that worked fine in XP destroyed a windows vista install - i'd hate for the same to happen here with windows 7, thinking it had been tested/works great on their OS.

 

[LittleLizard]

Change temp files in firefox (from google)

I believe there are add-ins to do this easily, but manually:

1./ go to the URL: about:config
2./ enter the dragons lair (!)
3./ Right-click somewhere in the list and select New > String, call it browser.cache.disk.parent_directory
4./ Enter the value z:\temp

do i have to replace browser for firefox¿

 

[Cuzza]

Here's my very unscientific testing methodology for testing if having browser cache on the RAMdisk speeds up browsing:

1: Find some webpages with a lot of data to cache - in this case the GIF thread at GN (about 150mb of GIFs over 4 thread pages)

2: Load them up sequentially in Firefox

3: Select "work offline" mode to prevent connection issues etc hampering progress

4: Use backward/forward buttons to scroll through the thread pages back and forth 3 times, waiting each time until entire page is loaded and "done" appears at the bottom. Time how long it takes to do this

5: Repeat 1-4 with the cache set to varying locations (RAMdisk, HDD, SSD)

RESULTS:

Cache in SSD: 69.4 seconds
Cache in RAMdisk: 68.7 seconds

Sooooo.... is my testing meaningless? Or does RAMdisk make simply make no difference?

 

[Mussels]

its so small its likely loaded into ram anyway.


i've got a 2GB ramdrive, and apart from fun with sending files over the network at max speeds, i cant see a use for it

 

[Cuzza]

Well, I tried, and gave up on the idea. It seemed to speed up my notebook but that may have just been my imagination. More to the point I want to be able to turn it off without losing my cache because I'm on a rather slow connection most of the time, and I keep a big cache. So thanks but no thanks RAMdisk

 

[somebody]

its pointless.

most programs only use the pagefile when you run out of ram, so using ram to make the pagefile results in the pagefile being used sooner (which is ram)... instead of just using the ram in the first place.

+1

Dunno about loading games from the RAM disk since you need to copy the game from the hard disk to the RAM disk to start with so all you've done maybe is moved your loading time to copying from the hard disk. A bit like superfetch, but customized.

 

[Velvet Wafer]

i bet this will be interesting, when they come up with non volatile types of ram... i read of a carbon nanotube one, that wasnt volatile on shutdown, or others that only needed such small load, that a simple LI-Ion battery should power them for 100 years

 

[Athlon2K15]

Also just for kicks, I installed Opera directly onto the RAMdisk. WHOAR does that load up quickly! Click the icon and BAM the window appears. Compared to Firefox and IE which take 2-3 seconds

EDIT: Just to be fair, tried Opera installed on the SSD as well. It loads up much faster than IE and Firefox, but not as fast as it did from the RAMdisk

how do you install opera on a ramdisk,when the pc shuts off data leaves the memory..or so i thought?

 

[Mussels]

how do you install opera on a ramdisk,when the pc shuts off data leaves the memory..or so i thought?

some of these softwares have a method where they dump/restore the data to and from the HDD on shutdown.


I've got a portable Iron and portable firefox, they may be cool on a ramdrive...

 

[Cuzza]

how do you install opera on a ramdisk,when the pc shuts off data leaves the memory..or so i thought?

Because I didn't shut down while it was installed. RAMdisk acts just like any hard disk, so I installed it, ran the few tests I wanted to run, then uninstalled. no worries.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

 

[lemonadesoda]

Sooooo.... is my testing meaningless? Or does RAMdisk make simply make no difference?

I think your test results are valid for your test, but perhaps also meaningless as a true test of the benefits of a RAMdisk.

I did (part) of your test. What I see is JUST A FEW FILES in the internet cache but they are massive gifs, 1-5MB big each. So why is it taking 60seconds to do your test? I think you are testing your CPUs ability to process the html page and these large gifs. This is the "same" test concept like the peacekeeper you did before, only using gifs not flash and activex. I dont think it is really testing the benefit of multiple random read/write of small files. The bottleneck is your laptop's CPU.

It may be true, that for a lot of webbrowsing, the RAMdisk isnt a lot faster than a SSD. We are CPU limited once we have the SSD (unlike with a HDD). But is this observation also true for more powerful workstations, or when we are not CPU limited?

The RAMdisk still has two valuable benefits in the SSD situation. i) significantly saves write thrashing, and ii) security of volatile data getting wiped on poweroff.

If you re-read my OP, that is why I investigated RAMdisk in the firstplace. I wasnt expecting a speedup. That was my surprise... and I have now installed RAMdisks on ALL our PCs. It makes a bigimprovement to the HDD based systems, and it gives me peace of mind on the SSD systems that the lifetime has just been extended by avoiding write thrashing.

 

[RevengE]

Nice writeup. thanks