Ramdisk

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-.-
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Ramdisk

#1 Post by -.- »

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/05/2 ... 03-server/

anyways does anyone use ram disks? Just wondering if it would be beneficial to load my portable software into one. I just use a few like firefox on a regular basis and I got enough ram to spare.

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webfork
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Re: Ramdisk

#2 Post by webfork »

Although the link provided mentions several Ramdisk programs, I tested the Gavotte Ramdisk with GUI v. 1.1.0.0.

Results:

If removed properly, appears to clean up after itself. Saves some temp files to HKLM\SYSTEM\LastKnownGoodRecovery\LastGood and C:\WINDOWS\LastGood\INF

Unfortunately it saves files to C:\WINDOWS\LastGood\system32\DRIVERS\rramdisk.sys and saves settings to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\RRamdisk\Parameters

Not portable.

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Firewrath
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Re: Ramdisk

#3 Post by Firewrath »

Real Quick here,

ramdisk = awesome, imo, if you can get one to work, and work correctly at that,
or mebey its just me thats had issues with them,

but,
id LOVE to find a hardware version for my comp,

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Re: Ramdisk

#4 Post by webfork »

Firewrath wrote:id LOVE to find a hardware version for my comp,
Agreed. I hate it when programs suck up RAM without asking, and getting a RAM drive setup would allow me to regulate that myself and get away from a million (very slow) hard disk read-writes.

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Firewrath
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Re: Ramdisk

#5 Post by Firewrath »

Old thread update ;)
...sorry, :P

Anyways,
very randomly came across this:
Acard Solid State Drives

seems from a random search they run from 250-500$ and most there say like 'RAM not included'
so thatd make it cost a bit more.

If anyone has seen any others (preferably cheaper :P), feel free to post. ^-^

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webfork
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Re: Ramdisk

#6 Post by webfork »

Firewrath wrote:came across this:
Acard Solid State Drives
I'm a little confused by the sites listing of "RAM Disk/ Flash Disk" as those are two very different things. But anyway ...

One of the primary advantages of a RAM drive is speed: whatever you're doing, its not going to be any faster than running everything off of RAM. However, putting everything through a bus (even a very fast one like eSATA) means that speed advantage will likely take a hit. According to a friend who works on big iron systems, there are buses that can handle that, but they tend to be expensive and enterprise-only.

As a result, someone who needs this would be looking for the unlimited read/writes. You'd want a drive like this for a constant, high-traffic database (probably not running Windows), high activity temporary drive (video editing perhaps), or maybe certain scientific applications.

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Firewrath
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Re: Ramdisk

#7 Post by Firewrath »

I'm not really sure with their wording either. Like the 'RAM not included' Actually says '(RAM module not including)' on the front and later in the description 'Product does not include RAM Module'.
Their first Contact information is from a place in Taiwan, so its most likely a mistranslation.
(They also have two US offices, so its not like they're some random foreign company :P ...though that should mean the site should be better, but yeah.)
However, they are the first I've seen in a long while to actually offer physical RAM drives, though I'll admit i havn't looked hard for one in the last 4 years,


and honestly my use for a RAM drive would probably be much more mundane then most people. First thing I'd do is throw my swap file on it, which would be my Main use for it. Otherwise I'd like it for anything that needs temporary harddrive usage, things like browsers or like when 7zip first extracts files to my harddrive before moving them where i want them. (I find that so annoying.)
Mainly just to try to lower the read/writes to my normal harddrive, things like that.

Slightly OT:
I honestly can Not remember who, but a few months ago I read someone (I Think Intel) is working on a chip to help merge files from a traditional harddrive and an SSD drive. What its supposedly supposed to do is move like your 'most used' files from the traditional harddive to the SSD for faster access. I found that a rather cool idea and would like to see it come out.
Even though with my computer from like 6+ years ago, I couldn't use it, it still seems like nifty tech.

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webfork
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Re: Ramdisk

#8 Post by webfork »

Firewrath wrote:working on a chip to help merge files from a traditional harddrive and an SSD drive. What its supposedly supposed to do is move like your 'most used' files from the traditional harddive to the SSD for faster access. I found that a rather cool idea and would like to see it come out.
Even though with my computer from like 6+ years ago, I couldn't use it, it still seems like nifty tech.
Absolutely. Although I would hope that somehow the technology could be moved from one drive to the next. The RAM will live a lot longer than those magnetic platters. I guess that's not how hard drive tech works tho.

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Andrew Lee
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Re: Ramdisk

#9 Post by Andrew Lee »

I have been following the HDD + SSD cache scene for awhile now.

Currently, there seems to be a few solutions on the market:

- Intel Z68, which is a dedicated SATA controller

- OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid, which has the PCI Express card form-factor.

- OCZ Synapse Cache SSD, which uses the Dataplex caching software

The first two are dedicated hardware. The last has the potential to work with any HDD/SSD combo, but unfortunately, I don't think Dataplex is selling their software off-the-shelf but only doing OEM deals.

At work, I am using a notebook with a 750GB HDD and a 120GB SSD. I also need to run a variety of virtual machines to do testing, and they are dog-slow when run from the HDD, but really fast from the SSD. But there is insufficient space on the latter to fit all the VMs that I use, so I have to swap VMs from time to time on the two devices. An SSD cache will be perfect for my requirement. Basically, I need ReadyBoost with a write cache. Now if Microsoft will only bundle that into Windows 8... :D

Of course, if you are running Linux, you can already use Bcache.

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Re: Ramdisk

#10 Post by webfork »

Andrew Lee wrote:I also need to run a variety of virtual machines to do testing, and they are dog-slow when run from the HDD, but really fast from the SSD. But there is insufficient space on the latter to fit all the VMs that I use, so I have to swap VMs from time to time on the two devices. An SSD cache will be perfect for my requirement.
I never thought to run a VM from in RAM for testing, but it could absolutely be done and would be amazingly fast.

Ideally you get something going with VMware over the network and set it up to run inside a Linux server with the RAM, but if you don't have that kind of backing in terms of hardware/network, an SSD would do the trick. Good idea.

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Re: Ramdisk

#11 Post by portafreeuser »

I used to mess around with RAM drives and there are some newer types of RAM drive drivers these days that are easier to use. The main problem I ran into was that sometimes RAM disks use more CPU. I'm not really sure yet why this happens and when. I have a feeling that it doesn't always happen but maybe depends upon the type of program calls reading/writing to the RAM drive.

But I did have some luck with certain types of operations like setting the RAM drive to be used as the TMP/TEMP/temporary data space. I also set it as the place where Recent file links were stored and other useless logs. It helped keep my harddrive from being thrashed and cluttered with junk. Of course this is experimental and theoretically risky, but it worked fine for me.

The only other issue I can think of is that RAM drive images saved to disk can easily get corrupted while in RAM and therefore should be replaced with a fresh copy every so often. Otherwise you run the risk of constantly reading and saving a corrupted image until something really bad happens to your data or it all crashes.

But again, RAM drives have some usefulness in rerouting certain types of data writes/reads. If you have trouble with rerouting the data, try changing environment variables such as TEMP and TMP or even trying some hard linking or symbolic linking of directory paths. Just be sure to back up your partitions before you make modifications so you can roll back the changes if you need to. This stuff can be risky.

Also, a program like FloatLED can help show you which hard drives are being read or written to and when.

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