Smack that SSD - 7GB/sec read, 10GB/sec write - for free!

[bhavv]

Considering RAM is so cheap, RAMDisk seems the better option for most

I disagree, how much would it cost for a 4 Gb ramdisk? Less than an SSD? Nope.

It looks interesting with being able to do this in software mode though, I have plenty of ram but I dont have anything that I could use to take advantage of his kind of ramdisk (The data stored in it clears every time you restart your PC right?).

 

[Echo]

can you explain how you did this

Assuming your ramdisk is ready (auto-load, auto-save, mounted and formatted), this method avoids having to reinstall Firefox / wipe profiles or use another drive letter, and can be undone if needed:

1. Close all instances of firefox
2. Go to C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ and find the one you use, copy it to a subfolder in your firefox program folder
3. Create shortcut to firefox.exe, view its properties, add -p at end of target, including a space after .exe"
4. Run shortcut, create a new profile and point it to your new subfolder - make it default
5. Close all instances of firefox
6. append [backup] to your firefox program folder
7. Right click my computer > manage > disk management (your formatted ramdisk should be in the list)
8. Right click partition and choose change drive letter and path > add > mount in the following ntfs folder > browse > navigate to program files and create a folder named the same as #6 before you renamed it > ok
9. Open in explorer your renamed program folder > select all > copy > open the folder you created in #8 (you'll note it should have a hdd icon for the folder) and paste

Your normal shortcut to firefox should now run entirely from the ramdisk - if something goes pear shaped, delete the ramdisk folder and rename your backup folder as before. Remember you must have the ramdisk config to save the image on shutdown (or regular intervals) or it'll lose new bookmarks/addons etc.

Looks longer than I realised in steps, hope that makes sense!

 

[233]

knew putting 8 gig in my rig would prove a good move at some point

now i'm having a 4 gig system ram and a 4 gig ram disk


edit meh it doesnt like win x64

 

[MikeHiow]

I've just tried this, and there doesn't seem to be any discernible difference, but then I already have an SSD. I guess it could save a few more write operations from the SSD, but then I have it set to autowrite the image every hour

 

[DragonQ]

You don't need a RAM disk for Firefox, you can tell it to use RAM to store temp files directly.

 

[An Exception]

Ramdisk is rubbish compared to fancy cache.

 

[MikeHiow]

You don't need a RAM disk for Firefox, you can tell it to use RAM to store temp files directly.

Does it also persistently store the cache, though? It's kind of pointless if all of your cache is gone each time Firefox is restarted.

 

[coolamasta]

Just tried this as seems to work well for FF and IE cache on my work PC, fast enough already on my home PC with SSD though, great for normal HDD users though

 

[RedvGreen]

heres a pic of what i was saying
you can get ones that link up on sata

It is volatile data though...

 

[cavemanoc]

I've got a gigabyte Iram, I had 4x 1DDR sticks on it, and I had Windows XP (nlited) on there.

I took almost daily Acronis true image backups of it, now it sits in the corner, should sell it really!

It's a real shame that Gigabyte didn't persist with these - given the 'cheapness' of 4Gb sticks now you could build quite a monster if they produced 6 or 8 (or more!) stick boxes. With Pci-e 2.0 offering 16GB/s it would make for an awesome high speed platform, especially with the battery unit they were promising.

 

[JonJ678]

Shame we cant put the OS on it

I ran Debian from a ramdisk for a while, have been meaning to set it up again but yet to get around to it. Ridiculously quick in exchange for a longer install. A more intelligent approach is to move things like libraries into a ramdisk, but leave configuration files on non-volatile storage.

In a similar vein, I installed XP inside virtualbox, with the virtual hard drive on a 6gb ramdisk. That was also insanely fast, though it was difficult to think of a use for it after installation.

So OS inside a ramdisk is completely possible. Windows inside a system ramdisk is, as far as I know, considered impossible.

 

[MikeHunt79]

Well, SSD's claim to offer RAM-like performance, which means that RAM is going to be faster.

Are there any of these RAM to SATA bridges that take DDR2? I'm quite tempted to see if I can get W7 to run from 8gb of ram...

How much is one of those DDR drives?

 

[PoliticallyCorrect]

i wonder how well readyboost would work with ramdisk?

 

[Muel]

What are the risks of this? I run 4gb of ram, a single F3 1tb and W7 x64 Pro. I use many many browsers for testing, but mainly Firefox. It takes about 4 days to open it up from a cold boot. Would this make much real difference?

I'm planning on upgrading to 8gb of RAM and an SSD or two at some point, but it won't be for a few weeks/months yet.

 

[Chiribo]

What are the risks of this? I run 4gb of ram, a single F3 1tb and W7 x64 Pro. I use many many browsers for testing, but mainly Firefox. It takes about 4 days to open it up from a cold boot. Would this make much real difference?

I'm planning on upgrading to 8gb of RAM and an SSD or two at some point, but it won't be for a few weeks/months yet.

Or you could just install Firefox 4. It's free and miles faster.

 

[Muel]

It's also Beta, was buggy last time I tried it, about half my plugins didn't run and I don't like the interface. Much prefer FF 3.6.

 

[geuben]

Shame we cant put the OS on it

I set up just this at work.

We PXE boot pre installed CentOS images on to development machines with 48GB of RAM, and have an NFS mounted home directory for persistent storage.

We don't do it for performance reasons though.

 

[kablooey]

I was looking at using a ramdisk for Battlefield 3 instead of a SSD...With 24GB of RAM I could create a ~18GB ram partition and install BF3 there (assuming it's that big) and create a drive image of it on my SSD for fast recreation thereafter. I'm not sure what difference it would make to loading times, but I must get on the map MOAR FASTER!!!1!

 

[OspreyO]

I tried using a a RAM disk for a MS Access job I run. But no matter what I did it kept using the hard disk heavily. I could never track down why. Windows 7 seems to love using the disk.

 

[mikeyholt]

Interesting...