Fastest media for booting and/or running Windows from?

[daw123]

Hello guys and girls,

I'm just curious as to what is currently the fastest media for booting and/or running Windows from?

Would this be SSD or high speed HDD (such as a Raptor)? Or are there any others (assume that cost is not an issue).

This is purely a general question and doesn't apply to any particular version of windows (would this make a difference?), or any particular system.

Is there any way that you can boot and/or run Windows from a RAM Disk for speed purposes?

Problems I can forsee with this (and I'm sure people will mention other issues) are:
The RAM Disk would have to be shown as a physical drive in the BIOS for you to be able to boot from it.
It would lose the data on the RAM Disk once the RAM lost power when the PC was switched off.
Presumably a RAM Disk is also assigned as a drive by software in Windows, therefore it can't be 'seen' in BIOS as a drive.
You would also need enough RAM to be able to do it.

I'm a noob when it comes to computers, so forgive me if what I've said above is B.S. and I don't know a lot about RAM Disks either (as you can probably tell).

 

[Idontcare]

I'll post based on personal experience here.

The fastest commercially available desktop consumer segment media is gigabyte I-Ram.

The downside to Iram was the capacity limitation (4GB per Iram card) combined with the fact the user was limited in the number of irams they could pack into a computer as the Irams required PCI slots for their power supply.

I used two irams in raid-0 for a total of 8GB capacity, and I used nlite to strip down my Windows XP installation so it would comfortably fit into my 8GB iram raid array.

Boot-times were simply amazing. This is not my video of XP reboot times, but it gives you the right idea as it was done by someone else with raid-0 iram.

Now the question of ramdisks...ramdisks unfortunately are even more limited in capacity than iram. Unless you have an i7 x58 mobo loaded with 12GB of DDR3 you aren't going to have >8GB free ram available to devote to a ramdisk.

I use ramdisk, specifically superspeed, in my windows XP install. The 5GB ramdrive is fast but cannot be used as a boot drive.

Superspeed's ramdisk ver 9 has a couple cool features, first it stores a copy of the ramdrive on your harddrive when you shutdown or reboot your system, and then restores that ramdisk drive image upon boot-up so the user can treat the ramdrive as if it is a permanent non-volatile memory drive.

The second cool feature is that it can access the memory above the 4GB limit even if you are using a 32bit OS such as Win XP 32bit. I use Win XP 32bit, have 8GB installed in my rig, and the ramdrive only uses the portion of memory that Windows won't use (i.e. the upper 5.25GB).

However the ram drive is created by drivers, it is not visible to the BIOS, cannot be booted from.

The next fastest (and practical) media for booting your OS with would be a raid-0 array of flash-based SSDs.

 

[daw123]

Thanks for the response IDC.

Edit: I've jsut watched the video you linked. The boot up time is simply amazing.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: daw123
Thanks for the response IDC.

Edit: I've jsut watched the video you linked. The boot up time is simply amazing.

What it goes to show you is just how much XP boot times depend on small file random reads, the exact performance metric that ram-based and flash-based SSD's dominate in over their spindle-based older siblings.

If you youtube search for iram you will find tons of videos of people using 4x raid-0 irams doing all kinds of things from Vista boot times to game load times, etc.

I love my iram, but I love my ramdisk even more. Someday I hope to love me some 4x raid-0 X-25 M setup as well.

 

[daw123]

I'll have look on the 'Net, IDC for IRAM for curiousities sake (btw these things are expensive - I know I mentioned in the OP that money wasn't an issue, but geez ~£600 for 8GB).

I'm personally going to buy and install the OS on a 150Gb Raptor (I've got Windows 7 beta).

Just out of curiousity, what do you use your RAM Disk for?

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: daw123
Just out of curiousity, what do you use your RAM Disk for?

My ramdisk is used for holding the output logs created during backtest simulations I run on forex (foreign currency exchange) automated code optimizations.

http://www.metaquotes.net/

When I do my optimizations (really just parametrization) my codes read and write to very small files, so much so that it can be the rate-limiting step during a backtest if the files are stored on a media that has paltry (<100MB/s) small-file random read/write bandwidth.

On a spindle-based setup my CPU utlization won't exceed 20% as the hard-drive is thrashing. With my ramdisk setup, my cores run flat-out 100% utilization. For an application that can take upwards of a month to complete a backtest array, the ramdrive is literally an "enabling" technology.

 

[CoinOperatedBoy]

Originally posted by: daw123
I'm personally going to buy and install the OS on a 150Gb Raptor (I've got Windows 7 beta).

I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that the Caviar Black offers comparable or better performance than old Raptors, although not quite at the level of a VelociRaptor.

 

[daw123]

Originally posted by: CoinOperatedBoy

Originally posted by: daw123
I'm personally going to buy and install the OS on a 150Gb Raptor (I've got Windows 7 beta).

I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that the Caviar Black offers comparable or better performance than old Raptors, although not quite at the level of a VelociRaptor.

Sorry for the confusion; I was referring to a Velociraptor.

 

[EarthwormJim]

Originally posted by: CoinOperatedBoy

Originally posted by: daw123
I'm personally going to buy and install the OS on a 150Gb Raptor (I've got Windows 7 beta).

I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that the Caviar Black offers comparable or better performance than old Raptors, although not quite at the level of a VelociRaptor.

They have higher sustained transfer rates, but they do not have lower seek times.