A Hard Drive made out of RAM?

[AgaBoogaBoo]

How would I go about doing this? My dad has told me that when he used to work on computers, like 20 years ago, probably more like 15 to 17 years ago, they would sometimes take like 20 sticks of ram, and have those identified as a hard drive. The only problem in this would be that if the power went out, they lost the data. That is, unless they had a battery backup and transfered all the data over to a hard drive.

Is this really possible? He told me this after I told him about how mechBgon mentioned the following: "sharkeeper has a quad-channel 8-drive U320 RAID0 of 15k Seagates on an LSI MegaRAID controller (480Mb/sec peak throughput IIRC)." He told me that back in the days (15 to 17 years ago, hehe), if they had enough money to buy something that expensive at that time, they would just make it out of pure RAM.

We didn't go into details so please don't flame me and say how stupid it is because if the power goes out, you lose all your data. This thread isn't something I'm making to invite flame about how stupid it is but rather to see if it is possible. If it is possible, can someone out there tell me how I would go about making this? I'm sure if I get some idea how to do this, I'll have the time to do it this summer. I can just get a job somewhere and buy nothing but RAM.

EDIT: I'm talking about getting like 20 gigs out of something like this. Not making a virtual drive from the RAM because the limit on that would be 4gbs since that is the 32bit cpu limit, isn't it? It would be kind of neat making a 20 gig drive out of something like this especially for people with the money to buy 8x 15,000 RPM drives from Seagate.

 

[UlricT]

hey... have you ever heard of RAMDISK? Its a program that lets you allocate some RAM as a seperate HDD. I think this program is available for even windows XP. never tried it though....

 

[Ionizer86]

Ramdrive is this 2k/XP driver that lets you make a ram drive with letter Z in MyComp. But I think it limits you to 32mb drive size. It's great for putting temp files in though!

 

[IanthePez]

There are also cards you can buy and insert 8 or so sticks of ram to make a physical ramdisk....I just don't remember who makes them or where to find them.

 

[ElFenix]

ram drives are actually a basic feature of dos...

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

NOT a RAM DRIVE, I mean a drive made out of RAM so you can go beyond the 4gb limit or whatever it is on 32bit cpus.

 

[Texun]

They make 'em.

BiTMICRO® Networks E-Disk® IDE/ATA flash disk drive deliver a solid state hard drive solution for data storage and protection while providing the powerful performance and speed today's data-intensive applications demand. E-Disk flash disk drive feature patented FlashBus? storage technology to speed performance, eliminate system bottlenecks, and offer durable storage for easy installation and start-up. E-Disk® requires no device drivers for installation and operation, and boasts random I/O rates of up to 25,000 IOPS, random burst read/write rate of up to 133 MB/sec, random sustained read/write rate of up to 110 MB/sec, and capacities of up to 34.8 GB. Decrease data access times and increased data transfer rates with the most innovative and reliable solutions for information retrieval and storage.

LINK

Not sure how much they are though.... someone else made a PCI card with DIMM slots which are\were in the range of $500 per gig.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Hmm... isn't there something cheaper than $500 a gig? I know they used to do it with older systems, why haven't they done it now? I now obviously there is a problem of losing all data if the power goes out.

Isn't there some PCI card with slots for standard RAM?

 

[vegetation]

Alternatively, you can use a compact flash card in native IDE mode (no drivers needed). The largest CF I've seen is 1GB, though.

 

[bob332]

Originally posted by: vegetation
Alternatively, you can use a compact flash card in native IDE mode (no drivers needed). The largest CF I've seen is 1GB, though.

i have seen some 3GB ones...

 

[Joony]

Isn't there some PCI card with slots for standard RAM?

I remember reading a review on one, had like 8 168pin SDRAM slots...

 

[DaiShan]

Originally posted by: vegetation
Alternatively, you can use a compact flash card in native IDE mode (no drivers needed). The largest CF I've seen is 1GB, though.

There is a 6gb made now, not sure if it is in production for the US though. Also, most CF cards will not sustain or even burst to speeds normal ide drives transfer at. The only thing you would gain by this is no moving parts (sound, reliability etc.)

 

[BFG10K]

You're referring to solid state disks and they've been around quite a while. They're pretty pricey though.

Flash cards are not quite the same since they're not designed for sustained I/O operations.

 

[McCarthy]

click here

 

[MikeMike]

Originally posted by: McCarthy
click here

damn that is what i want!!!, but gb sticks of pc133 are so exspensive!!!! 300+ for a single stick, and the board, with 4 sticks cost's $700!!!

hmmmm, what mobo has 7 slots on it, so i can fit 6 of these things, and a sound card. Must have onboard nic, and AGP slot!!!

 

[Confused]

Originally posted by: nourdmrolNMT1

Originally posted by: McCarthy
click here

damn that is what i want!!!, but gb sticks of pc133 are so exspensive!!!! 300+ for a single stick, and the board, with 4 sticks cost's $700!!!

hmmmm, what mobo has 7 slots on it, so i can fit 6 of these things, and a sound card. Must have onboard nic, and AGP slot!!!

My Epox 8RDA+ has 6 PCI slots, plus onboard 5.1 sound and LAN, and an AGP slot.




Confused

 

[MikeMike]

hmm now how to get 3grand?

actually that will go in the next computer i build b4 i go to college!!!!!!! just money is the issue, maybe pc133 ram prices for a gig will come down in a year, i can buy 5+ of those cards, loaded w/ 4 gigs, a 120gb HD, AMD 64 (or whatever will be better then) another gig of memory for the computer, sound card, (NV 50????), 19 in LCD, vapochill case, ummmm... hmm im thinkin around 5 grand!

 

[human2k]

Originally posted by: McCarthy
click here

I wonder how fast BF1942 will load on one of those.

 

[PCMarine]

Originally posted by: human2k

Originally posted by: McCarthy
click here

I wonder how fast BF1942 will load on one of those.

As fast as your processor will load

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: human2k

Originally posted by: McCarthy
click here

I wonder how fast BF1942 will load on one of those.

Remember that the bandwidth of a conventional 32-bit 33MHz PCI bus is limited to a theoretical 133Mb/second, which can be reached with nothing more exotic than an Ultra160 RAID card and a pair of Seagate Cheetah 15k.3's in RAID0. It would be better to have tons of plain old DDR (2100Mb/second bandwidth for PC2100) for your maps to be cached in.

 

[ku]

This is quite a real possibility. They are working on it, I believe, in order to create a faster hard drive. Exactly as you've said, they use the same chips as they do on RAM to store data on, but removing the power source would erase all data stored on the chip. But don't worry, I'm sure soon they will successfully create a ram based hard drive

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Originally posted by: mechBgon

Originally posted by: human2k

Originally posted by: McCarthy
click here

I wonder how fast BF1942 will load on one of those.

Remember that the bandwidth of a conventional 32-bit 33MHz PCI bus is limited to a theoretical 133Mb/second, which can be reached with nothing more exotic than an Ultra160 RAID card and a pair of Seagate Cheetah 15k.3's in RAID0. It would be better to have tons of plain old DDR (2100Mb/second bandwidth for PC2100) for your maps to be cached in.

It ki nda sounds like your saying a pair of those hard drives is as fast as SDRAM.

 

[SexyK]

Originally posted by: AgaBooga

Originally posted by: mechBgon

Originally posted by: human2k

Originally posted by: McCarthy
click here

I wonder how fast BF1942 will load on one of those.

Remember that the bandwidth of a conventional 32-bit 33MHz PCI bus is limited to a theoretical 133Mb/second, which can be reached with nothing more exotic than an Ultra160 RAID card and a pair of Seagate Cheetah 15k.3's in RAID0. It would be better to have tons of plain old DDR (2100Mb/second bandwidth for PC2100) for your maps to be cached in.

It ki nda sounds like your saying a pair of those hard drives is as fast as SDRAM.

They are probably close to the same speed if they are both limited to a 32-bit/33MHz PCI slot. Most SCSI RAID controllers are 64bit though, so in some cases the RAID may have a higher throughput. The access time on the memory will obviously be much much lower, but it won't be able to push the maximum theoretical bandwidth of PC133 memory.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: AgaBooga

Originally posted by: mechBgon

Originally posted by: human2k

Originally posted by: McCarthy
click here

I wonder how fast BF1942 will load on one of those.

Remember that the bandwidth of a conventional 32-bit 33MHz PCI bus is limited to a theoretical 133Mb/second, which can be reached with nothing more exotic than an Ultra160 RAID card and a pair of Seagate Cheetah 15k.3's in RAID0. It would be better to have tons of plain old DDR (2100Mb/second bandwidth for PC2100) for your maps to be cached in.

It ki nda sounds like your saying a pair of those hard drives is as fast as SDRAM.

Let me put it this way:

CPU <-- 2100Mb/second --> northbridge <-- 2100Mb/second --> system memory

(typical DDR2100 setup with AthlonXP 2200+ or whatever)



or


CPU <-- 2100Mb/second --> northbridge <-- 800Mb/second --> southbridge <-- 133Mb/second --> PCI bus <-- (insert storage device here)

(typical setup when having to access anything attached to the PCI bus, including the RAMcard thingie)



See how huge the pipe between system memory and the CPU is, compared to anything attached to the southbridge or the PCI bus? That's my point... before buying a fancy RAMcard or SCSI RAID setup, make sure you've got enough system memory. Nothing new about that idea, of course...

 

[Pariah]

EDIT: I'm talking about getting like 20 gigs out of something like this. Not making a virtual drive from the RAM because the limit on that would be 4gbs since that is the 32bit cpu limit, isn't it? It would be kind of neat making a 20 gig drive out of something like this especially for people with the money to buy 8x 15,000 RPM drives from Seagate.

No, it's not. Not something that large unless you are made of money. If such a device existed everyone would be using it.

It ki nda sounds like your saying a pair of those hard drives is as fast as SDRAM.

Depending on the application, you could easily create a SCSI setup that would blow away any of the current PCI card RAM drives or SSD's. For video editing for example, where throughput is most important, PCI RAM cards are limited to around 110MB/s, and at around $1800 for a card + 4GB of RAM it isn't exactly very large. For the same price in SCSI you can buy a PCI-X RAID card and 7 10K drives totaling 252GB and approaching 500MB/s sustained throughput. 500MB/s vs 110MB/s is a pretty bad butt kicking.