Ram Disk anyone?

Energize · 5 Apr 2011 at 23:41

Useful for running programs off, if not the OS.

Tekgun · 5 Apr 2011 at 23:46

Yea I was using one for ArmA2 before I bought an SSD, they are awesome if you have enough ram.
I used one from HERE basically it's free to use as long as you keep the ramdisk under 4GB

Energize · 5 Apr 2011 at 23:51

Yeah that's the one. I think it's worth upgrading to 16GB of ram just for this tbh.

whitecrook · 5 Apr 2011 at 23:51

Hmm with 16 gb of ram one could render DVD video discs to ram and then copy to disk to improve speed.

SirCanealot · 5 Apr 2011 at 23:53

Hmm. Anyone fancy doing some game loading comparisons VS RAMDISK vs SSD vs HDD to give me a decent excuse to upgrade to at least 8 gigs?

Energize · 5 Apr 2011 at 23:55

I wish I had enough ram to benchmark some modern games.

No point in me buying more DDR2 ram though I think.

Avathar77 · 5 Apr 2011 at 23:56

I used one called superspeed ram disk, think it was version 10. Made 2 gb Ram disk when I had 6gigs in my rig. Put the page file on it.

postmanfw · 6 Apr 2011 at 00:35

Makes my ssd look ancient

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Buchanan0204 · 6 Apr 2011 at 00:36

Avathar77 said:
I used one called superspeed ram disk, think it was version 10. Made 2 gb Ram disk when I had 6gigs in my rig. Put the page file on it.

Did you notice a difference?

infernox · 6 Apr 2011 at 00:48

postmanfw said:
Makes my ssd look ancient

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

HOLY BAJEBUS ! ! ! !

postmanfw · 6 Apr 2011 at 01:04

I guess ddr3 ram makes a difference

Could be tempted to get another 8Gb for and just use 4Gb for windows leaving a 12Gb ssd that runs 15 times as fast as a vertex 3

Must be a downside/catch apart from the limited space?

Energize · 6 Apr 2011 at 01:16

The faster the frequency of the ram the higher the transfer rates, same goes for running in dual/tri channel mode, though latency is a few nanoseconds higher.

Imagine what technology we would all be using if money were no issue.

whitecrook · 6 Apr 2011 at 01:16

postmanfw said:
I guess ddr3 ram makes a difference

Could be tempted to get another 8Gb for and just use 4Gb for windows leaving a 12Gb ssd that runs 15 times as fast as a vertex 3

Must be a downside/catch apart from the limited space?

it's not persistent...

dustofnations · 6 Apr 2011 at 01:19

Buchanan0204 said:
Did you notice a difference?

Generally the (secondary storage) page file is only used when the RAM is full [or other situations where it is probabilistically more optimal to swap], so I'd have thought putting the PF into the RAM was relatively pointless - you may as well just turn the PF off or make it small. I'd be surprised if you got any useful gains.

There may be some differences between Unix and Windows when it comes to this, but I shouldn't think so. Had a quick read around only though, if you find anything useful please post it.

whitecrook said:
it's not persistent...

+1 (lol!)
That's why RAM has timings concerning refreshes, you have to cyclically re-charge the capacitors to maintain its existing state. Turn off the power and after a few moments without refreshing you'll have lost the data. You can imagine it like a CRT monitor, and maintaining the image on the screen :-)

.

postmanfw · 6 Apr 2011 at 01:19

Ram Disk program can write the info to hd on shutdown then reload it on startup

That would delay shutdown and startup of course

Energize · 6 Apr 2011 at 01:21

You can simply put the pc into standby mode as well, rather than shutting down. Using a UPS to protect against power failure. Which is what I currently do.

Avathar77 · 6 Apr 2011 at 01:22

Buchanan0204 said:
Did you notice a difference?

Well I got higher 3dmark score (Not much abt 400 odd points in 3dM06) which would not mean much for many

But it did "feel" snappier with windows and browser tasks.
There was a post in here some time ago about the same ramdisk question.
I read in a magazine(Custom PC or PCPro cant remember) an article about optimal page file size and positioning in partitions and ram disks. They came up with "It depends" kind of answer. But from what I remember for general purpose and gaming a 2GB page file in a separate partition or a ram drive was the fastest option.

dustofnations · 6 Apr 2011 at 01:27

Energize said:
You can simply put the pc into standby mode as well, rather than shutting down. Using a UPS to protect against power failure. Which is what I currently do.

For a while, god forbid long outages! I assume you don't keep critical data on it though. The solution to write the data to persistent storage at shut-down seems reasonable paired with a UPS for non-critical data.

Energize · 6 Apr 2011 at 01:37

Longer outages aren't much of an issue because you can always switch the pc on and copy the ram to disk, a ups should have enough power to keep a pc in str mode for at least 24 hours. I think the biggest issue is system crashes/reboots.

dustofnations · 6 Apr 2011 at 01:58

Energize said:
Longer outages aren't much of an issue because you can always switch the pc on and copy the ram to disk, a ups should have enough power to keep a pc in str mode for at least 24 hours. I think the biggest issue is system crashes/reboots.

Indeed you have almost no protection in the case of crashes or power cycling.

I seem to recall some RAM disk boards with in-built batteries were sold by gigabyte and their ilk a few years ago to the enthusiast consumer market that solve the problem.

Nothing much has appeared since though AFAIK that is anywhere near as affordable or uses DDR3 or SATA{3,6}. The appearance of high-speed and higher-profit SSD devices diminishes their appeal on both sides of the equation I should think.