Why no PCI-e RAMdisk?

[Concillian]

i have 2 of them
[...]
it has 2 sata ports and you can split the drive in 2 drives and use both sata ports. 2 drives with half of capasity
[...]
it is limited in sata2 or sata1 internally somewhere
i have 2 acard 9010

So you end up with Capacity and price like RAM and speed like an SSD? Seems like it may have been great before SSDs, but now that you can get a 120GB SSD that will max out SATA2 for the same price as 16GB RAM... seems kinda pointless.

I'd think the big advantage would be having significantly more throughput than SATA2 can carry.

 

[ALIVE]

So you end up with Capacity and price like RAM and speed like an SSD? Seems like it may have been great before SSDs, but now that you can get a 120GB SSD that will max out SATA2 for the same price as 16GB RAM... seems kinda pointless.

I'd think the big advantage would be having significantly more throughput than SATA2 can carry.

well i bsossught them arosund the tsime intel released the fisrsst ssd x25s-m and x25-e so ssd was not cheap then but acard was not cheap either
but i like a volitate hard drive
i can use it and be sure nothing is left on the machine.
for one strange reason acard did not really realeased a new model
acard ans 9010 was out 2009
now acard has 9012 which has only one sata port and sells it cheaper
but it is identically to 9010
no ddr3 model that would make it cheaper for the unit to fill
no sata3 model either
if acard release a newer version with dd3 i would buy 2+ units for sure.

as for ssd i see a lot crying in this forum my ssd died
as for traditsion hd i have also a hight failure rate myself to big hard drives 1tb 2tb i wonder if they do not make hd as good as they used to
one ram goes bad you can replace it and the drive is fully usuable.
the logsic in acard is to plug it and function as ahard drive reguire no drives

 

[Lorne]

Though I wouldnt turn one down the AData, It is still SATA and is still limited to the SATA port speed.

Want direct PCIe and the 8GBps bandwidth

 

[jgspeer]

I know there are a couple PCI disks and ive seen at least one SATA RAmdisk, but why no PCI-e RAM disks? DDR3 8gb DIMMS are cheap, a 64 GB RAMdisk will offer significantly better performance that an SSD, so why arent there any?

I understand you and exactly what you are saying! I don't understand it either. First to clear up these other posts. What FAILED was that they used a sata controller chip which slowed it down to the now ssd speeds we see today. That's nothing compared to what ram can smash in a second.

What I think the OP is talking about is that DDR3 run (according to wiki) 6000 to 17000 MB/s yes MB not Mb. I would rather have that as a drive too. LOL Then the bottleneck would be the north-bridge in the CPU and the processing speed like it was in the old days! Nasa really never needed storage speed advanced you see...

I have been wanting to do the same thing and can't find anything. My idea is to have a hard drive back up the ram data at shutdown. Then at startup somehow copy all the data back to ram and boot the system... VM? Anyhow all i can find is a motherboard for $300 bucks that you can install 128 GB Ram. I figure keep 8 for the system to use and make a ram drive out of the other 120. It's just making that work.... That's as far as I've come to coming up with what you and I seek. PCIe from wiki (This means a 32-lane PCIe connector (×32) can support throughput up to 16 GB/s aggregate) would do just that and I could even see them using a GPU and the memory on that to run the ram disk.

If you ever figure it out post it would yah.

 

[Goophy629]

I've been looking for a SATA3 or USB3-like ramdisk for quite a while too, and see none..

I did noticed the Acard and the 4GB PCI...The Acard seems OK but very unfortunately too big and the throughput is capped by the SATA 1(and a later model SATA2)..

As mentioned by jgspeer above, desktops are lucky, if 64GB doesn't fit, you can get a Xeon platform pretty cheaply at these day which support 96+ GB of memory, that truly beats anything for a home-use personal computer.

In the case of utilizing internal Ram as a ramdisk, I personally recommend "Primo Ramdisk," it support the features mentioned in the post above, such as save to HDD at shutdown, auto-save periodically; auto-load at start-up, delay auto-load at start-up(which means only start to load when file requested, so save ram). Moreover, Dynamic Memory Management, which means the physical memory is occupied only when data actually loaded(while most of the ramdisk software just occupy the full size at start up).

For laptop, unfortunately, 32GB max, even for those equipped with a Xeon processor(like some Clevo based laptop).....At this point, a 2.5" or 3.5" hard drive sized ramdisk would be still fantastic for some heavy work(and with consideration of maintaining the SSD).. Though, again, the Acard, the only option, is capped at SATA 2...not to mention the 5.25", but 300+ dollars is just...Awwwwwwwwwww... I'd get one or two if they priced it less than $100. I mean, really, if someone is willing to spend a thousand bucks to two of these Acard for a desktop, then why not just go for a Xeon platform??? I wonder.[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
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[dave_the_nerd]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6371/micron-p320h-pcie-ssd-700gb-review-first-nvme-ssd

 

[Goophy629]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6371/micron-p320h-pcie-ssd-700gb-review-first-nvme-ssd

Thanks for the link~

Well, there are many PCIE based SSD, PCIE to SATA adapters that also with RAM cards for cache, though, no pure RAM.....And..the price of PCIE based SSDs just make themselves useless for individuals....

 

[Zagnutty]

This thread may be going on 3 months old now since last replies, but...

Came across this thread while searching around for something in the 1TB range for a custom project I'm building. I came across something I see many here asking for...pcie. No sata, all pcie. Doesn't fit into my 1TB need, but here ya go folks. Looks like it's been around since around 2009 according to date on this review. -
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage/DDRdrive-hits-ground-running-PCI-E-RAM-based-SSD

http://www.ddrdrive.com/

First post, and probably last. Enjoy.

 

[cschrachta]

You may want to check out http://www.hyperossystems.co.uk/07042003/products.htm
Its based on DDR2 but does go up to 64GB if you want to buy the much more expensive DDR2 - 16GB module.
It is basically what you have been describing, flash bakup, external power, etc...
Just though it could help, I wish they had a DDR3 version as well since the RAM price would be a lot better and capacity would be larger.

 

[biostud]

http://arstechnica.com/information-...er-forgets-non-volatile-dimms-hit-the-market/

 

[FelixDeCat]

Ive been installing dataram or gavotte ramdrives on computers for years now. Im currently using an 8GB ram drive for temp files, browser caches, and related privacy concerns. It is also used for virtual memory (which is rarely used with 16gb total).

 

[Cerb]

It seems like if you can afford such cards, or the drives, you could afford a computer that could hold more RAM in the first place, making it redundant.

 

[Magic Carpet]

I've been running Gigabyte's i-RAM device rev 1.3 for years. Changed the battery once. No hassle with firmware updates, nothing. It does consume some 15w during operation, though. That, and little space makes it a good museum item

Consistent speed and nero zero latency are about it's biggest advantage, no matter how full or empty it is. I would love to use a modern SATA3 DDR3-variant, if I could get one. I am not too happy (for various reasons) with todays SSD technology.

 

[Cerb]

The SSD bit is understandable. What I don't get is why use a card, with a high-latency low-bandwidth storage interface, instead of using RAM attached directly to your CPU.

 

[Magic Carpet]

instead of using RAM attached directly to your CPU.

Please send me a step by step instructional video, and I'll do it

 

[Cerb]

Please send me a step by step instructional video, and I'll do it

Any of these? On Windows, there are quite a few pieces of 3rd-party software to do it. DataRAM's in the most common, but limited to 4GB before paying. SoftPerfect's is fairly popular, and free to larger sizes, too.

I typically only have uses for them on Linux, where's as easy as mkdir, and mount -t tmpfs or ramfs.

 

[StoatWarbler]

It seems like if you can afford such cards, or the drives, you could afford a computer that could hold more RAM in the first place, making it redundant.

Ram is volatile. This is not (assuming the battery is charged)

A perfect use case is ZFS ZIL. Under "normal" circumstances it's only required to be non-volatile over reboots/a few hours, but it makes a HUGE difference to write performance

 

[StoatWarbler]

vs just using the bus for power:

http://www.ddrdrive.com/

This is NOT an iRam competitor, any more than a Lamborghini Diablo is a competitor to a Toyota MR2.
(IE, they're both non-volatile ramdrives, after that the comparisons stop)

the DDRdrive is going up against STEC's ZeusRAM 8Gb units. It'd be interesting to see a side-by-side comparison, however I'm fairly sure the DDRDrive would win due to the STEC being hamstrung by SATA/SAS interface.

 

[aigomorla]

lol i wanted a ram drive

they would make awesome toys however the storage cap is so small... ugh... lets think about it realistically....its DDR2!!! :X

Also no one is stopping you from using ramdrive.exe and just doing it that way with all the ram one could throw on today's modern setups.

vs just using the bus for power:

http://www.ddrdrive.com/

This is NOT an iRam competitor, any more than a Lamborghini Diablo is a competitor to a Toyota MR2.
(IE, they're both non-volatile ramdrives, after that the comparisons stop)

the DDRdrive is going up against STEC's ZeusRAM 8Gb units. It'd be interesting to see a side-by-side comparison, however I'm fairly sure the DDRDrive would win due to the STEC being hamstrung by SATA/SAS interface.

isnt that a cache card?

id rather take one of these guys

cache cards!!!

 

[Pray To Jesus]

If you think there's a market, go make it and sell it for profit.