Another 8GB worth it for a RAM disk?

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Sunbed

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It's so cheap!!!

I want to make a RAM disk for CAD files and to store my pagefile/temp files on.

Is it worth getting another 8GB for this? Like I said, it's so cheap!!!!11

I have 8GB of 1600 HyperX already and I have a 120GB Vertex 2E SSD if that makes any difference.

Anyone made a RAM disk before?
 
From my expert knowledge recently gained from a minute or so on wikipedia, I would say it would be beneficial. My own CAD meshes take up over 1Gb each, so I imagine it would be useful.

What software do you recommend for creating these? They sound interesting.
 
I've wanted to give this a try for some time :D not sure there would be any point having the page file on it though, just disable the page file and make a smaller RAM disk so there's more RAM available to the operating system, that said though I'm not sure if there might be some unforeseen consequences of disabling it even if you have plenty of RAM, maybe someone that knows more could comment on that :p
 
Trofeo said:
I've wanted to give this a try for some time :D not sure there would be any point having the page file on it though, just disable the page file and make a smaller RAM disk so there's more RAM available to the operating system, that said though I'm not sure if there might be some unforeseen consequences of disabling it even if you have plenty of RAM, maybe someone that knows more could comment on that :p
Click to expand...

Yeh I think you're right. It's probably best to keep the page file enabled on C:. That used to always be recommended anyway.

Advantages I can think of so far:

  • Use it for editing large CAD files or Photoshop (I don't use PS though).
  • Running an untraceable virtual machine :ninja:
  • Put temp files and browser caches on it for speed and to reduce SSD wear.
  • Move map files from your favorite games to it and make a junction in your steam folder or whatever - quicker loading times?

Would like feedback if anyone has any experience of this. Honestly it's probably not worth it most of the time but I want an excuse for a little project and 16GB of RAM is so tempting :p
 
I have 12GB RAM and use a 4GB RAMdisk. It's difficult to get more than that becase the best program I've found that works under Win7x64 only supports up to 4GB in the free version.

I use it for TMP/Temp directories, temporary internet files, page file and Quakeworld. Works quite well although it does increase boot/shutdown time considerably if you have it save/load an image on shutdown/boot.

As for moving map files what you will likely find is that it is not the actual map files that take the time to load, but rather textures. Most maps are probably only a few megabytes of data compared to textures comprising hundreds of megabytes. What you could look at doing depending on what games you play is look at putting a stripped down version on there i.e. only the content required for multiplayer.
 
Thanks for that ^, that's pretty much what I discovered last night. I had a go with the free version of some RAM disk software - probably what you use.

I put the two biggest folders from my L4D2 folder into the RAM drive and made a symbolic link to the Steamapps folder. The folders were "maps" (like you said, not that big actually) and "sound" (2.99GB!). This pushed it to just under 4GB in total.

I timed loading the game, loading the first map, and the second. It shaved about a second off the boot into the game, and about two seconds (approx 13 secs down from 15 ish) for each map. That sounds promising but like you said, the boot times and shutdown times are MUCH longer. It seems to make an image of the entire 4GB of space, even if you don't have anything in the drive.

So, you might see some benefit if you made an 8GB RAM drive and stuck the entire game in there, but boot times and shutdown times would be even longer in that case. Therefore I'll probably forget the idea, SSD is fast enough :)

16GB will probably be pointless. I'll kick myself if it goes up drastically in price though.
 
The thing is the main point of RAM disks is to improve application performance and for many people trading off some boot/shutdown time isn't a big deal. Especially the latter, I mean once you've called a shutdown you can just walk away and leave it. Often I shutdown my pc in my office upstairs before going down a floor to go to bed, and I can still hear it running when I go in the bedroom due to writing out the image to SSD :)
 
From the amount of time it took, I'm guessing it writes the ENTIRE image each time? It seemed to be no different whether writing an image with a 1kb text file or 4GB of data.

It would be better if it just read/wrote the changes.
 
The trick is to save the RAMdisk image with just an empty temp folder in it, then compress it (1.64MB here!). From then on, only load the RAMdisk, never save.
If you really need to load/save, use a .BAT file to do the copying.
 
I'd make a ram disk (except Gavotte's RamDisk which I've found personally as slow some time ago) and put swap, all temps and some caching there. Of course it might be not enough for some programs and projects (I've done a poster for my friend in 300dpi under GIMP with huge size of 2.5mx1m which took 12 GB ! for its swap), but rest of similar swaps you can put on standard HDD (not SSD).
 
weird_dave said:
The trick is to save the RAMdisk image with just an empty temp folder in it, then compress it (1.64MB here!). From then on, only load the RAMdisk, never save.
If you really need to load/save, use a .BAT file to do the copying.
Click to expand...

that is very interesting, two things:

1) how does it work in practice

2) how did you set it up?

thanks
 
1: run the config util
2: set disk size to 4092MB
3: start RAMdisk
4: in disk management, find and format the ramdisk (NTFS for me, drive R:)
5: make a temp folder in the ramdisk
6: back to the config util, in load and save, "save disk image now" (D:\RAMDisk.img for me, takes a little while)
7: find the disk image file, right click on it and select properties. In general->advanced tick the compress to save space checkbox.
8: back to config util, tick "Load image at startup"
9: make sure save on shutdown is not ticked
10: File->save settings
11: Reboot to check it's all working as planned

It's working very well here. HDTach peaking at 3000MB/s :D
 
If your using HDD's, there is one very big benefit of using a RamDisk, and thats to use a ReadyBoost thats stored on the RamDisk.

The ReadyBoost area will cache common HDD requests, and because it's placed on a RamDisk it's totally rapid.

I have tried this and it works.

This is my old ReadyBoost thread: Basically instead of using an SSD to cache common HDD data, your using a RamDisk. Here I have 32GB of Readyboost available, but just 1GB on a RamDisk will see a good improvement.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18262214&highlight=readyboost

Another way of looking at this, is making all your HDD's hybrid. But instead of the hybrid memory being on a USB stick, or SSD, the hybrid memory is main computer memory!
 
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Some programs won't run without a pagefile, shoving it on a ramdisk and letting the system manage it works well, most of the time it just sits there using 16MB.
It also gets around another problem, windows swapping out minimized program memory in favour of cache. When you restore the program window it can take months to come back into view.
 
The thought of using a RAM disk as a "page file" location is rather amusing.

In short: Don't do it. Ever.

Also placing ReadyBoost onto a RAM disk is just as stupid. The kernel already performs in-memory caching of I/O. The purpose of ReadyBoost is to provide a second-level cache in the form of a USB memory stick. "Tricking" Windows into using a RAM disk instead is pointless as it is already performing in-memory caching and the RAM disk is just wasting space that could have been used by that first-level cache.

The ReadyBoost second-level cache is only used for I/O that is known to be random in nature (not sequential). Whereas the proper first-level in-memory I/O cache that is maintained by the kernel is useful for both random AND sequential I/O. It is just better in all ways. So don't be a ding bat and think you are being clever in setting up ReadyBoost on a RAM disk. It's not clever at all. It's actually just wasting memory and needlessly encumbering the kernel with having to service a second-level I/O cache when it isn't actually going to achieve any benefits. When properly configured ReadyBoost can be useful, precisely for the reason that it is a second-level I/O cache that *isn't* using any RAM.
 
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NathanE said:
Also placing ReadyBoost onto a RAM disk is just as stupid. The kernel already performs in-memory caching of I/O. The purpose of ReadyBoost is to provide a second-level cache in the form of a USB memory stick. "Tricking" Windows into using a RAM disk instead is pointless as it is already performing in-memory caching and the RAM disk is just wasting space that could have been used by that first-level cache.
Click to expand...

I see where your coming from, and don't totally disagree with you. However there is a case to use a small readyboost (say 1GB of a 16GB system).

Readyboost caches HDD clusters that are regularly used. Windows pre-fetch will cache executable files only (at least dll's, exe's), but not data files (text, images, outlook file etc).

Your very correct that windows will catch files, but it won't cache data files to the extent Readyboost will.

Incidently I don't have readyboost on ramdisk, I do however have readyboost stored on SSD. The following was my thread on this, however I now use 2 spanned SSD's.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18262214&highlight=readyboost

I would say in normal operation (once everything is loaded) around 50% of disk reads is Readyboost alone. This is activity that windows memory management has not cached. Dispite having 16GB of ram, if I turn of readyboost my system runs slower (including timed visual studio builds timed with watch). It even sounds louder, as HDD's are working harder once the ssd readyboost is removed.

I keep intending to do some youtube performance videos showing build times, and performance when working with large images etc, and how the counters on SSD readyboost ramp up and reduce / prevent HDD reads.

NathanE said:
The ReadyBoost second-level cache is only used for I/O that is known to be random in nature (not sequential).
Click to expand...

Well according to MS that's correct, however I've seen large amounts of data going into Readyboost. For example I've performed SQL queries (sql database stored on HDD), and 10's of MB a second have been written to the readyboost.

I've also worked with 15-20MB Camera Raw files (hundreds of them), and once I start working with these, again the readyboost caches these all up. When I switch between images you can see the Readyboost reads, and reads of these files from HDD begin to stop.

I will say Windows 7 does a benchmark of the readyboost (transparent to user). My only explanation is it tests the SSD's realises the speed and prepared to store larger data than it would a memory stick.
 
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