RAM disk on a 1GB netbook?

[paul1149]

I have a netbook with a 160GB hard drive that shows a good SMART report. No bad sectors. Throughput is very decent at 50mb/s, but for some reason it has a very slow - on average 26.4ms - seek time. I did all I could to help it, and nothing changed anything. The performance of the netbook was quite bad.

Then I stumbled upon the Ram Disk concept. The unit only has 1GB of RAM, so I set 160mb of it as the virtual drive, and then I mapped the Windows 7 (Starter) %Temp% and %TMP% environmental directories to it. I also mapped IE's temp folder to the ram disk.

The difference is amazing most of the time. Here's my concern. What is going to happen if Windows needs to do a big job - say, installing a large .NET file or a service pack, or defragging the hard drive - and the TEMP folder is not big enough? Is there provision for overflow?

Thanks for any insight you can give

 

[DMHolt57]

...if the page file is still set to windows managed, you should have no problem.

 

[paul1149]

A ha. That's sounds right. The unit still has a pressure valve. Do you think 160GB is about the right balance for %TEMP% and cache duties? Thanks for your insight.

 

[DMHolt57]

I would try 250mb... :devil:

 

[paul1149]

hmmm. That's pretty aggressive...

 

[DMHolt57]

How many tabs do you usually have open in a browser session? I show 215mb with 7 tabs...

 

[paul1149]

I'll be selling it, so I would have to set it up for plain vanilla use. They may well install a different browser that won't access the ram disk. This brings up a related issue - what does the browser do if it runs out of cache space?

 

[DMHolt57]

different browsers cache diff amts, ie uses 10% of the drive, then clears Expired, etc. as needed, depending on usage and cached sites you visit each session, its a user subjective kind of answer...

 

[paul1149]

Ok, thanks. I think I'll set up Chrome to cache there, as I have with Opera. I may up the limit a little too. Wish I could speed up the HDD, but this ram disk thing has a lot of potential, and was worth finding out about.

 

[LMiller7]

What is going to happen if Windows needs to do a big job - say, installing a large .NET file or a service pack, or defragging the hard drive - and the TEMP folder is not big enough? Is there provision for overflow?

If the size of the RAMDisk is inadequate for any requirements you will likely receive an out of disk space error and the operation will fail. Many applications do not cope well with such conditions. In many cases there is nothing that can be done except fail. There is no provision for an overflow. The size or configuration of the pagefile is not relevant.

Be aware that the use of a RAMDisk will impair overall system performance. With only 1 GB total RAM the impairment could be serious.

 

[paul1149]

I did see one of those errors, I'm not sure where. My initial observations were very positive, but I need to give the machine some run time. Thanks.

 

[DMHolt57]

you might find these guys take on it interesting... How To Change Google Chrome's Cache Location And Size | gHacks Technology News

 

[paul1149]

Thanks. Finding out how to change Chrome (they don't make it easy) was one of my next stops, and Martin did a good job on it there.

 

[paul1149]

I made the Chrome cache location switch via the direct Registry hack. I think it's working, but it seems chrome doesn't use much cache?

IAC, things seem to be working smoothly. Most of the time this machine is running quite nicely, which is a minor miracle.

I spoke to Andrew over at SoftPerfect, and he said it is possible a large installer would choke on such little %TEMP%. If so, the thing to do would be to switch TEMP to the hard drive temporarily.

A better solution, short of replacing the hard drive, would be to up the RAM to 2GB and increase the RAM disk %TEMP% space. I don't plan on going that route though.

Thanks and BW.