what is so good about ramdisk?

[faye]

Hi,

I have Windows 7 Professional 64bit
4Gb ram

Just wondering what is so good about ramdisk?
what can take good advantage of having a ramdisk?

I can upgrade to 8gb anytime if another 4gb is necessary

 

[toad096]

I have 24GB ram, so I am seriously interested in this topic. My thoughts on this topic are:

Firstly WIN7-64bit has a very good built-in diskcache (uses all free ram), so all your ram is put to good use (this was not the case with XP).

The purpose of a ramdisk is obviously different, but the non-persistent nature of a ramdisk limits it's use rather severely. There are ramdisks (e.g. Dataram Ramdisk) which can save the contents to an image file prior to shutdown and read back the image file from disk on startup, but this of course prolongs the boot time. Also both my boot and data drives are SSDs further reducing the benefit of a ramdisk. Main use for ramdisk is then your browser cache, scratch area for Photoshop, temp files if you are a developer etc. Certainly with only 4GB ram I wouldn't bother. Perhaps if I put my system on an UPS and the sleep function works reliably, I might start playing with ramdisks again.

Something else which looks interesting is FancyCache made by Romex Software. But this is still in beta and I am still on the fence if I would dare trust my data to this concept. Although this would be a good fit for my vmware workstation VMs.

So (as usual) it depends entirely on which apps you run and your usage pattern.

 

[Lorne]

Unless your using old programs that cannot use anything above 2GB of memory.
IE. Photoshop7 will only use 1.7GB max and page/scratch the rest, So a 1GB ramdisk extends that (Yes I use PH7, I have my reasons, But also PH-CS5 as well)

No other reason to use one otherwise. (well that I can figure)

 

[faye]

WIN7 64 build in diskcache?
so if i really upgrade to 8gb, will i see any notices?
mainly i use this notebook is for outlook>browsing(chrome 11>Firefox 4.0)>images viewing(very little editing by photoshop)

will i see any notification?

 

[Idontcare]

The main benefits of a ramdisk are the same as the main benefits that an SSD brings to the equation over that of spindle-based storage - namely that the random read/write speed for small files is drastically improved.

1TB Hitachi spindle-HDD

G2 160GB:

8GB (raid-0) I-RAM:

5GB Ramdisk:

Basically if you are doing something that you find benefits from swapping out your spindle-HDD for an SSD, you are going to observe additional benefits by taking it to a ramdrive.

The benefits might not be worth the expense, just as some of the benefits aren't worth the expense of upgrading to SSD for some consumers, but the reasoning for using them is pretty much the same.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

I tried putting a RAMdisk on my laptop (note that it only had 2GB memory, so that's why I had problems). I loved and hated it at the same time; the only reason for the hate, though, was that if I made it too big, it meant I didn't have enough system memory left for proper applications and I got slowdowns anyway, but if I didn't make it big enough, it was no use because I couldn't put anything useful on it. But yeah, it's awesome, especially if you have portable apps - load them on from hard drive or USB, and the apps are so fast, especially compared to running from USB. At least until my memory ran out.

 

[gamefreakgcb]

Is it a viable option with an 8GB system? I already have an SSD.

 

[Idontcare]

Is it a viable option with an 8GB system? I already have an SSD.

Pull open task manager, go to performance tab, launch "Resource Monitor ...", go to Memory tab of resource monitor.

In the Physical Memory bar you will see "In Use", "Modified" and "Standby".

The last one you see is called "Free". This is the amount of memory you can allocate to a ramdrive without having any impact on the Windows7 performance (diskcaching, etc, that's all accounted for in the Standby category).

On my Win7 x64 Ult box which has 8GB of physical ram, my app usage results in me having 780 MB "free". (I too have an SSD already)

Personally there isn't much I would do with a 780MB ramdrive. So I don't use one now. I used too, but SSD gave me every bit of the practical performance in my apps as my prior 5GB ramdrive was.

Now if I had another 8GB installed, 16GB total and a free ram of 8.7GB's then I wouldn't hesitate to make an 8+ GB ramdrive (I use superspeed personally, saves and auto-restores the ramdrive on reboots, etc) and put it to good use.

 

[aigomorla]

however guys... it says i have 8gigs free.. when i do my stress tests, i see that free drop down to almost half at times.

When i game, i will lose around 1-2gigs..

The amount of ram should reflect the amount of software u have open.
If your the type who doesnt like to close windows, you will benifit from more ram.
If your the OCD type that likes to keep your desktop clean, then you will not benifit from anymore then 2-4gigs.

Whatever excess u have from that, can be used as a RAM drive.

WOAH IDC why is my hardware cache 9x your value? :O

 

[Idontcare]

WOAH IDC why is my hardware cache 9x your value? :O

Because windows recognizes that the rootkits installed with your HD pron videos needs more reserved ram than the rootkits that came with my regular old standard rez pron videos. It is a kind of "l33t tax" like water-cooling or buying Intel intel EE cpu's. Be proud, it means you represent

 

[aigomorla]

with your HD pron videos needs more reserved ram than the rootkits that came with my regular old standard rez pron videos. It is a kind of "l33t tax" like water-cooling or buying Intel intel EE cpu's. Be proud, it means you represent

DAMMIT!!

i have to worry about viruses enough in my pron... now your telling me i get TAX'd on it too? :thumbsdown:

 

[anikhtos]

Well there ara many good ramdrive software out there. usually with a back up option. saving the image of ramdrive to harddisk and auto load it when windows start thus even after reboot the ramdrive disk will be fully operational. you might consider that ram is not permanet storage thus if your system will crash then nothing will be saved. usually a good way to use ramdrive is to put the internet explorer or what ever browser you have there. the temp file of the windows. so you will but files that are used many times but you do not care if they are lost. myself put the cache file of browser the temp file of windows. i have no restore option enabled. i just love the idea after any reboot the cache of the browser is empty empty empty (internet explorer never really empty the folder grrrrrrrrrrr just make the file bigger and bigger gr)

 

[Voo]

i just love the idea after any reboot the cache of the browser is empty empty empty (internet explorer never really empty the folder grrrrrrrrrrr just make the file bigger and bigger gr)

Uh sure you're only deleting the trash temp folder of the browser and not the temp folder where it stores pictures, large js and co which are completely useless to load everytime you open a page? The second would mean unnecessarily downloading quite some files, which would affect performance negatively.

 

[Lorne]

Anyone remember the dynamic ram drive the Amiga used, I miss that.

 

[hanspeter]

Anyone remember the dynamic ram drive the Amiga used, I miss that.

Yes, it is fun when the ram disk survives a reboot

 

[bradley]

I miss my Amiga 2000 and 1200.

 

[kmmatney]

Is it a viable option with an 8GB system? I already have an SSD.

I use a small RAM drive for windows and internet temporary files. It saves useless writes going to the SSD, and I like that everything gets deleted if I reboot. I tend to stick email attachments there, and then move then to the main drive if I need to. It just keeps things a little cleaner. My RAM drive is small only 128MB, and I have my internet temp file size restricted to 64 MB (haven't found this to be a problem).

 

[gamefreakgcb]

I use a small RAM drive for windows and internet temporary files. It saves useless writes going to the SSD, and I like that everything gets deleted if I reboot. I tend to stick email attachments there, and then move then to the main drive if I need to. It just keeps things a little cleaner. My RAM drive is small only 128MB, and I have my internet temp file size restricted to 64 MB (haven't found this to be a problem).

Think I'll try something like this out.

Meanwhile, my RAID 0 Kingston 96GB