RAMDRIVEs

[FelixDeCat]

04/16/2012 Update - I have a dual boot system with WINDOWS XP and was able to access the extra 5 Gigs of ram using GAVOTTE ramdisk ( http://www.crocko.com/1907118935 ) and installing the included registry hack.

1) edit boot.ini to include /pae switch (may already be enabled if you are using XPs built in software DEP)
2) run registry installer
3) run gavotte and do not change any settings as it will allocate all available memory to the ramdrive


http://www.jensscheffler.de/using-gavotte-ramdisk-in-windows-7

Previous post using win7 64 bit & dataram ram drive below -

 

[BoomerD]

Yet you STILL can't post in the right forum...

http://forums.anandtech.com/forumdisplay.php?f=47

 

[FelixDeCat]

Yet you STILL can't post in the right forum...

http://forums.anandtech.com/forumdisplay.php?f=47

republicans.txt :sneaky:

 

[Krazy4Real]

ok? and?

 

[FelixDeCat]

ok? and?

Oh yeah, dataram is the s/w.

 

[Coup27]

now reboot.

 

[Athadeus]

Hah, that seems ridiculously fast compared to SSDs even. What frequency is the memory running at and on how many channels? I am also curious what software you used to set it up.

 

[icanhascpu2]

Hah, that seems ridiculously fast compared to SSDs even. .

.... duh?

 

[FelixDeCat]

now reboot.

Thats the point. Speed and privacy. Computer goes off and so do cookies, history, data, etc. Also, very handy for other tasks. Anything else?

Hah, that seems ridiculously fast compared to SSDs even. What frequency is the memory running at and on how many channels? I am also curious what software you used to set it up.

The free software is available here -

http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk

There are others. Here is an old comparison chart -

http://www.madshrimps.be/vbulletin/...-solutions-up-2358-1539mb-s-r-w-speeds-69781/

I dual boot XP and W7 on an old laptop. I am looking for something that recognizes the 4th gig on the 945GM chipset that has performance comparable to Dataram. Ill let you know what I find. ^_^

The system is a Sandy i5, dual channel 8gb DD3 1600 Kingston.

 

[gevorg]

pissing contest Part II:

Any folks here with a X79 board and quad channel?

 

[FelixDeCat]

pissing contest Part II:

Any folks here with a X79 board and quad channel?

Whats your setup?

 

[taltamir]

Ok I just had an idea.
Install windows7 on this, install all updates and programs, make an image to a fast SSD.
In the case of powerloss, restore it from that image.
The SSD reads at 500MB/s (sequential speed). if its 15GB you could restore in as little as 315GB * 500MB/s = 30s.

 

[Coup27]

Thats the point. Speed and privacy. Computer goes off and so do cookies, history, data, etc. Also, very handy for other tasks. Anything else?

I don't follow. You cannot boot from cold from a RAM disk as there is nothing to boot from. Everytime you turn on you would have to boot another media, image onto the RAM disk and then use it. Plus if theres any updates or changes you made after loading the image they would be lost unless you re-did your image. Not really practical IMO.

 

[paperwastage]

slow

desktop ddr3 1333 i5 2500k... 4x4gb

though I never have any use for it (or rather, found an easy way to use it )

 

[FelixDeCat]

Ok I just had an idea.
Install windows7 on this, install all updates and programs, make an image to a fast SSD.
In the case of powerloss, restore it from that image.
The SSD reads at 500MB/s (sequential speed). if its 15GB you could restore in as little as 315GB * 500MB/s = 30s.

I dont use an SSD right now, but if you try this let us know the results. I know the dataram program loads the image at startup (virtual drive), so would this be chicken /egg scenario? Or can you install W7 to another drive while W7 is running?

 

[FelixDeCat]

I don't follow. You cannot boot from cold from a RAM disk as there is nothing to boot from. Everytime you turn on you would have to boot another media, image onto the RAM disk and then use it. Plus if theres any updates or changes you made after loading the image they would be lost unless you re-did your image. Not really practical IMO.

Im not using an image at all. It is meant to be volite for temp environment (temp/tmp = r: ), FF/IE browser cache, etc. I dont need anything saved on this drive.

As far as loosing cookies every session thats not really a big deal since I save passwords, etc on the browser. The ULTIMATE private browsing session. :biggrin:

For people that do use SSD's Ive heard that using a ramdrive could lessen the wear on it since most activity comes from temp files and browser activity.

 

[FelixDeCat]

slow

desktop ddr3 1333 i5 2500k... 4x4gb

though I never have any use for it (or rather, found an easy way to use it )

Is that O/C'd? I just run stock.

 

[taltamir]

Im not using an image at all. It is meant to be volite for temp environment (temp/tmp = r: ), FF/IE browser cache, etc. I dont need anything saved on this drive.

As far as loosing cookies every session thats not really a big deal since I save passwords, etc on the browser. The ULTIMATE private browsing session. :biggrin:

For people that do use SSD's Ive heard that using a ramdrive could lessen the wear on it since most activity comes from temp files and browser activity.

I can't afford enough RAM right now, its even more expensive then SSD

 

[paperwastage]

Is that O/C'd? I just run stock.

stock 1333

I just set my browser (opera) 's cache to use 20MB, and use AUTO for mem cache

tried loading up as many tabs... took me 300 tabs (of all different things/images) to finally hit 4GB of memory and crashed the browser (only 32bit, 4GB limit... maybe i'll test the 64bit version some time, linux only though for now)

 

[psolord]

Since you guys are talking ram disks, has any of you tried moving just the swap file to a ram disk? Are there any considerable performance/response gains?

 

[FelixDeCat]

Since you guys are talking ram disks, has any of you tried moving just the swap file to a ram disk? Are there any considerable performance/response gains?

I have the temp environment set there but not the swap file. I might try it eventually since I havent fully utilized the whole 2gb yet. It would seem that running a reasonable swap file at that speed might have its pluses.

 

[paperwastage]

Since you guys are talking ram disks, has any of you tried moving just the swap file to a ram disk? Are there any considerable performance/response gains?

i dont think that idea itself makes any much sense...

swap files are used when you want to offload stuff from RAM... why? because your RAM is running out (if the program/application/OS is using swap files effectively)

but your swapfile (on a RAMdisk) is reserving RAM space...so you run out of RAM because you're using a RAMdisk, and taking data and then storing the it back onto the RAM(on the RAMdisk), but you can't actually use the stuff on the RAMdisk unless you swap in back into the active RAM portion

*all assuming that the OS/program is using RAM effectively

 

[taltamir]

i dont think that idea itself makes any much sense...

swap files are used when you want to offload stuff from RAM... why? because your RAM is running out (if the program/application/OS is using swap files effectively)

Good explanation.
Although some programs intentionally and explicitly demand to use the swapfile for certain low impact data instead of RAM in order to "conserve" ram for more important stuff.
It is possible for a program to do that, but do so incorrectly and apply it to high impact data.
When a program is doing it incorrectly in this exactly specific manner, then putting the swapfile on a RAMdrive makes sense

Alternatively. Your OS itself could be using RAM incorrectly (common in older windows version, however IIRC Win Vista and Win7 do it right)

 

[FelixDeCat]

Updated - Now working on Windows XP 32 bit SP2.

 

[Icecold]

Ramdisks are great if you have a need for them. I have a specific task that is extremely disk dependent(but not used often enough to justify the cost and time to optimize) and needs to read and write very small files rapidly. I'm sure there is a more efficient way to accomplish what I need, but what I did was allocate 12-13 GB of ram to ramdisk, and create a virtualbox disk on the ram drive. I then installed XP to it, so the XP 'boot' drive is all ram(but the guest OS doesn't know that).

Once I am done with one project I just copy the VMDK file to a normal drive, and then when I need to do another(which could be weeks or months later), I start the ramdisk software again and then copy the VMDK file over to it.

It seems to work well because some applications do not work properly if not installed to c, but with the virtual machine my entire c drive is ram. If using normal hard drives it would take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to finish one task, with the ram disk it's done in a couple hours generally.

edit - just wanted to add what software I use. I use the paid for version of dataram ramdisk since i require disks larger than the 4gb limit. I'm pretty sure it was only around $10 when I bought it but it looks like it's up to $18 now.. still pretty cheap if you have something that needs very fast disk access.