SUPER FAST HardDrive/RAMDISK

[E982]

I made a RAMDISK

 

[whs]

It's a nice game but there is not really much you can do with it.

 

[E982]

Yeah I have it set so when my computer boots it reloads an img from last backup that happens when I shut off my computer.

 

[Callender]

What do you mean?

Yeah I have it set so when my computer boots it reloads an img from last backup that happens when I shut off my computer.

You're supposed to use it to boost performance by swapping the Windows Temp and User Temp folder (Environment variables) onto it and if you're really brave you could swap the page file for your windows partition onto it but I don't see where backup comes into it.

Maybe you could explain what files you're keeping on it.

 

[whs]

The page file is a waste of time and precious RAM. With 4, 6 or 8GB of RAM you will practically never see a page swap. In my book, RAMdisk only makes sense if you have 16GB or more RAM. Then you can afford the space on the RAM.

 

[strollin]

The speed benefits gained while using the ramdisk are mostly lost by the need to load the ramdisk at startup and save the ramdisk's contents prior to shutdown.

For me, ramdisks were only truly useful on my early, floppy disk drive only computers.

 

[Callender]

Agree

The page file is a waste of time and precious RAM. With 4, 6 or 8GB of RAM you will practically never see a page swap. In my book, RAMdisk only makes sense if you have 16GB or more RAM. Then you can afford the space on the RAM.

Hi,

I'd agree with you! I tried using the swapadd64 utility to force the page file swap to RAMdisk and noticed no significant performance boost. I was just curious about the OP's intentions.

Best,

Chris.

 

[E982]

The page file is a waste of time and precious RAM. With 4, 6 or 8GB of RAM you will practically never see a page swap. In my book, RAMdisk only makes sense if you have 16GB or more RAM. Then you can afford the space on the RAM.

Hi,

I'd agree with you! I tried using the swapadd64 utility to force the page file swap to RAMdisk and noticed no significant performance boost. I was just curious about the OP's intentions.

Best,

Chris.

Yeah Linus Tech Tips told me about that its good because most games and programs skip strait to the page.

 

[E982]

The page file is a waste of time and precious RAM. With 4, 6 or 8GB of RAM you will practically never see a page swap. In my book, RAMdisk only makes sense if you have 16GB or more RAM. Then you can afford the space on the RAM.

Yeah I have the RAM to Do it

 

[E982]

The page file is a waste of time and precious RAM. With 4, 6 or 8GB of RAM you will practically never see a page swap. In my book, RAMdisk only makes sense if you have 16GB or more RAM. Then you can afford the space on the RAM.

Yeah I have it set so when my computer boots it reloads an img from last backup that happens when I shut off my computer.

You're supposed to use it to boost performance by swapping the Windows Temp and User Temp folder (Environment variables) onto it and if you're really brave you could swap the page file for your windows partition onto it but I don't see where backup comes into it.

Maybe you could explain what files you're keeping on it.

At the moment nothing but yeah I will do some temp and a Page File is going on it for sure.

 

[Alejandro85]

Never do that! Putting the page file on a RAM disk is the biggest mistake one could do, because it negates the very function of the page file to begin with.

The page file is there to "simulate" that there is more RAM than really is installed. When Windows runs out of memory, it unloads the least recently used (at least, in theory) and saves to disk, so that memory is available to something else. But by putting it in a RAM drive, to simulate that extra memory, you're consuming memory. So, what you gain by the page file, you're losing on the RAM disk.

Because of that, putting the page file on a RAM drive is WORSE than disabling the page file altogether. The ideal place is a second, physically different hard disk, or the system drive if there is nothing better. But never on RAM.

 

[whs]

Right - it is catch 22.

 

[LMiller7]

I have never been a fan of using a RAMDisk with a modern OS. It was useful with DOS and 16 bit versions of Windows. But that was a long time ago. Modern operating systems have a sophisticated caching system that provides most of the benefits of a RAMDisk with fewer of the problems.

A RAMDisk provides very fast access to whatever files you have chosen to store there. The system cache is essentially a smart and dynamic RAMDisk. But you don't have to choose what is kept there, the OS does that for you based on actual usage. Portions of files that are frequently accessed will be kept in the cache for quick access. And the contents of the cache varies according to how it is used. And the size of the cache is dynamically adjusted according to current needs. If you are running applications that really benefit from the cache it will grow accordingly, always consistent with overall system needs for memory. On the other hand, if you are using a large application that makes little use of the cache it will be trimmed back.

A RAMDisk offers none of those advantages but it does deprive the system cache of a substantial amount of memory that it could be using to improve performance. If you really understand how the system memory manager works and you really understand how it interacts with your workload you may be able to use a RAMDisk to your advantage. But the odds against that are pretty long.

The pagefile is a particularly bad use of a RAMDisk. There are two possible scenarios here:

1. You have sufficient RAM that diverting a substantial amount of it to a RAMDisk will not significantly impact performance. In that case the pagefile isn't going to be used enough to impact performance anyway and you have gained nothing.

2. You do not have sufficient RAM to spare for a RAMDisk pagefile. In this case the gains in pagefile performance are more than offset by the losses of the RAM for process working set and the system cache. The pagefile is a net drain on performance.

All of this becomes clear when you understand how the memory manager works. That is far to complex to explain here.

 

[E982]

Never do that! Putting the page file on a RAM disk is the biggest mistake one could do, because it negates the very function of the page file to begin with.

The page file is there to "simulate" that there is more RAM than really is installed. When Windows runs out of memory, it unloads the least recently used (at least, in theory) and saves to disk, so that memory is available to something else. But by putting it in a RAM drive, to simulate that extra memory, you're consuming memory. So, what you gain by the page file, you're losing on the RAM disk.

Because of that, putting the page file on a RAM drive is WORSE than disabling the page file altogether. The ideal place is a second, physically different hard disk, or the system drive if there is nothing better. But never on RAM.

I was told that some games and programs will skip to the page file so if you put your page file on the RAM DISK you know its FAST!

 

[LMiller7]

I was told that some games and programs will skip to the page file so if you put your page file on the RAM DISK you know its FAST!

Can you explain what that means?

 

[Layback Bear]

I have found that if one just lets Windows 7 handle caching and page filing things work just great. If their is a way of out smarting Windows 7 memory handling I don't know what it is.
Just install a bunch of ram and enjoy.
Back in the XP days we wondered why Microsoft didn't design a system to take care of this Ram thing. Well they answered with Windows 7 taking care of the Ram thing.

LMiller7 good job with you post # 13. It won't let me rep you.

 

[LMiller7]

Back in the XP days we wondered why Microsoft didn't design a system to take care of this Ram thing. Well they answered with Windows 7 taking care of the Ram thing.

XP wasn't as bad as many people think. Actually memory management in XP was very good. Of course Windows 7 is better.

One problem was the misleading information in Task Manager. It wasn't wrong, just mislabeled and thus misinterpreted.
I am speaking of the graphs labeled "PF Usage" and "Pagefile usage" which actually referred to the commit charge. Many computer professionals didn't understand this. I saw one forum thread where a number of "experts" were stumbling over themselves trying to explain the apparent behavior, but never understanding what they were seeing. The designers of XP were seriously maligned, all over a mislabeled graph. This was by no means an isolated incident. Task Manager often confused rather than informed.

NT4, Windows 2000, and XP all had a graph showing the commit charge but labeled otherwise. The graph was finally done away with in Vista. It really wasn't that important anyway.

 

[OldMX]

I made a ramdisk once and linked the "SoftwareDistribution" folder on a clean Vista x64 install, ran windows update and the updates were downloaded and installed incredibly fast, it shaved 4/5 of the time of the full update process.