Windows 2000 & RAM Disk - I'm pretty sure you'll be interested

[erub]

I had been thinking about a modern RAM Disk a while ago, and how it would speed up performance if you had a lot of RAM. A post by another user looking for a Windows 98 RAM disk a few days ago made me think about this again. In a moment of revelation, I went to the venerable altavista and searched for RAM Disk. Amazingly, I got a few hits, and one of them had a RAM Disk program for Windows NT/2000! I downloaded it and installed it, but only having 128 MB, it decreased performance. I added another 128 MB today, and wow! I put my Internet Files on my RAM Disk, and now all websurfing doesn't access the harddrive, a nice speed up.

The program I downloaded - demo:
SuperSpeed

Another link to one (Haven't tested it)
RamDiskNT

Any other ideas on what would be good to cache in memory, besides web cache? I made the RAM disk about 40-50 MB, but it can be adjusted.

 

[Adul]

I have been wondering the same thing, I want to have about half a gb of ram to play with this myself. and make on hell of a nice ram drive.

 

[SUOrangeman]

Th jlajoie site was the first *I read* that was capable of working with NT and also got past the 32MB limit of the Win9x/DOS RAM disk. I've never had enough RAM nor a real legitamate purpose for using one. Temp Internet Files sounds great, but some cookies worth keeping may not get kept. Thoughts of putting swap/page file in RAM have been brought up, but that may be self-defeating.

Thanks for the links tho. I had lost them.

-SUO

 

[Mutilator]

What's the "new" limit on RAMDISK size now? hehe.. maybe I'll sell my 512MB that John just sold me and buy a couple gigs... then install my OS onto a RAM drive and never reboot lol

 

[Dufusyte]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't a RAM Disk have to load all of it's contents from off of the HD onto RAM at boot-up, and if any changes have been made, re-write all of the data to the HD when you shutdown?

That seems like alot of reading/writing from the HD to me. As a person who frequently fires up my PC to do something, and then turns the PC back off again, I don't think a RAM Disk would be a good idea for me, even though I have 512MB ram.

The HD is the slowest component in the system, and needing to read 30MB of data off of it at each boot-up does not sound enjoyable.

I've thought of putting all of UT onto a RAMDisk, but can you imagine loading >100MB of data into RAM at every boot-up? Maybe if I left my system running for days it would be worth it.

If you are happy with your RAMDisk, you probably only have a few MB of data actually loading into it. How many MB is your web cache?

 

[erub]

It backs up the memory to the hard drive occasionaly....and loading 30 mb off a hard drive is not a big deal..at ata-33 it would take 1 second.

 

[erub]

TTT

 

[Sir Fredrick]

Why not just adjust your browser settings to use more RAM?

 

[xtreme2k]

put my Internet Files on my RAM Disk, and now all websurfing doesn't access the harddrive, a nice speed up

I dont think caching those files in RAM as those internet files are generally very small (~10kb per html page, 50-100kb of graphics) will seriously speed up anything compared to our already fast hdd.

I think you now have 256MB and that makes the difference. Difference between 128MB and 256MB is significant in win2000.

 

[Viper GTS]

and loading 30 mb off a hard drive is not a big deal..at ata-33 it would take 1 second.

That's IF the drive can maintain a steady 30 mb/sec read/write speed. Which very few drives can. Burst transfer rate doesn't mean diddly for loading large files, it's all about sequential transfer rates.

Viper GTS

 

[Howard]

<< but doesn't a RAM Disk have to load all of it's contents from off of the HD onto RAM at boot-up, and if any changes have been made, re-write all of the data to the HD when you shutdown? >>



A RAMDisk only loads data when it is told to be filled. i.e. it's empty until there is a command 'move *.* J:', assuming J is the RAMdisk drive. The command used by the OS will probably be different. So unless it has to be filled, it won't be filled, it'll just be taking up RAM.

I believe that with a RAMDisk, the OS treats it like a normal hard drive, albeit an extremely fast one. Therefore, the OS is led to believe that once power is gone (as is the case when shutdown occurs) the RAMDisk will retain the data, because ordinary hard drive data isn't volatile. But once power is gone, physical memory loses its data.

Actually, a better way to explain this probably would be to think that the RAMDisk is just normal memory, only it has been given a drive letter so that you can access it. That's really the only difference between physical memory and a RAMDisk, IMO.

 

[Howard]

This link says...



<< The files stored in RamDisk is not automatically saved to your hard disk drive. >>

 

[erub]

you didn't take that in context:

Each SuperSpeed partition can be either NTFS or FAT. The software has three modes of operation:

1. Write through data protection mode
2. Lazy write (or write back) data protection mode
3. Simple RAM disk mode with no backing disk partition

In write through data protection mode, SuperSpeed writes data synchronously to the backing disk partition. If a power failure or system failure were to occur in this mode of operation, data would be fully protected from loss in exactly the same way as it would be without SuperSpeed being loaded.

In lazy write (or write back) data protection mode, SuperSpeed uses a proprietary write caching mechanism to enhance performance even further. Lazy write mode dramatically improves the performance of write intensive applications. The use of an uninterruptable power supply is recommended in this mode. If a power failure or system failure were to occur in lazy write mode, the data which has not been flushed to the backing partition would be lost. Use of an uninterruptable power supply will greatly reduce the likelihood of data loss, since SuperSpeed automatically performs a write flush once a second in the background.

In RamDisk mode, there is no backing partition so any data written to the RamDisk is lost when the system is shut down or rebooted. This mode is extremely useful for temporary files or data which is permanently stored on magnetic media. For example, this can dramatically speed up web browsing and serving.

There you have it. BTW, Viper, I (and many of us fellow enthusiasts, me thinks) have an IBM 75GXP or another drive capable of similar speeds, which is capable of reading at over 33 mb/sec (35 mb/sec for first 50%, 28 mb/sec for last 50% (im inferring that this is what he was talking about)

Tom's Hardware Review of IBM 75GXP

 

[rubberneck]

Wow...that little proggie is $229 for W2000Pro...for the non-demo version. Says the demo only works for 3weeks...(hmmm....I wonder).

 

[erub]

heh it aint worth $229

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

Making a RAM disk out of your existing ram is a pretty cool idea, but it is nothing like the SSD harddrives that i have seen. THese harddrives are stacked with memory modules, i looked inside one and its just insane. My friend who works at Earthlink says that they are used for their email servers or something. Anyways, loading programs is INSTANTANEOUS. No lag, nothing. After spending an hour on that machine, it made me realize why people pay 20K for equipment like that.

 

[spamboy]

and loading 30 mb off a hard drive is not a big deal..at ata-33 it would take 1 second

There isn't a drive out there that can maintain that kind of real-world transfer speed. I have a drive that benchmarks over 33 MB/s, but I rarely see over 15 in the real world. Under a boot-up situation, with other things to load at the same time, you're looking at maybe 10 to 15 seconds extra for something like that... Not worth it in my book...

 

[erub]

that's utterly ridiculous. I did not notice an increase in bootup time - and I would have noticed 15 extra seconds.

 

[evanichka]

Hehe yeah, I don't see what good a RAM drive is in normal everyday use. If you do copy data back and forth, I don't see what the great advantage is - maybe a little advantage but why go through all that trouble for not such a great advantage?

Unless you have a RAM disk drive like the Solid State ones or whatever they are called, I don't see a truly useful everyday use for it.