RAMDisk Guide

[Panda Man]

Greetings HardwareLogic visitors! Here's something new for the guide section!

I'm sure a majority of you know what a virtual CD/DVD drive it. But have you ever wanted a virtual Hard Disk Drive? I'm sure you have, at least by the time you've read this sentence!

So just what is a virtual hard drive? Just that, a virtual hard disk that acts just like a physical hard disk. Its in your physical memory. Keep that in mind, as it is locked in physical memory, eating it away (that would kind of defeat the purpose if it were in the pagefile). I wouldn't suggest anything over 64mb, unless you have alot of free memory (+1GB).

What are the advantages? Well, it will be fast as hell!!! No moving parts, the drive in your RAM, which means it can get up to (I've been told anyways) 60 times faster!

The disadvantages? It can only be as big as your free physical RAM, and if power is lost, your drive will be lost.

Installing the drivers and controlling them isn't hard. In fact, lets jump on that and not worry about the risks!!! (actually, though there aren't really any risks that I've noted, always keep your data backed up in case windows explodes or something. And remember that I nor HardwareLogic is repsonsible if something does go wrong. The only thing you have to lose is the data you put on the ram drive :0 . It would also be wise to create a restore point)

So first thing's first, grab the drivers (second link is direct)

Free RAMDisk for W2k / XP / Server 2003 / PE

http://members.fortunecity.com/ramdi...ion_530107.zip

RAMDisk Pro Enterprise evaluation is indefinitely free, but if you set it to anything above 64MB you get an "Incorrect Function" error and the driver is dead until you reinstall. And apparently there is a "reminder" that the version is free that gives a "fatal error." If that happens, waive it off, nothing has happened, its just a reminder that you are using the free version. (I've never actually had this happen to me btw). This version also comes with Driver utility that lets you save and manage an image to your hard disk, very handy considering you can easily lose the drive with so much as a reboot (Your RAM is not static like a thumb drive :P It'll lose all data if there is no power).

There is a regular RAMdisk out there, completely free, but there is no option to save an image to your drive so upon reboot, you lose all your data. Not to mention the filesize limit is 32MB. It is pointless for anything other than servers.

Anyways, download the drivers and utility, and then extract the folder somewhere. In this guide, I have extracted them to the desktop. Installation is basically the same for both XP and Vista, but I am using vista. So nyah! And while I'm at it, I tried to make this guide as user friendly as possible, with lots of pictures and stuff :D I'm not trying to make you feel like an idiot (Hitman has that one covered), I justed wanted those that aren't power users to be comfortable ;)

Go to Control Panel, Click on Add Hardware, and you will get the Add Hardware wizard.



Click next and tell it that you wish to install the hardware Manually from a list



click on Show all Devices at the top of the list



Click on "Have Disk" and tell it there location of the drivers.



They are located in "RAMDRIV\ENG" depending on where you extracted them. In this guide, we extracted them to the desktop, so the path would be:

C:\Users\Panda Man\Desktop\RAMDRIV\ENG

For windows XP users, this would actually be

C:\Documents and Settings\Panda Man\Desktop\RAMDRIV\ENG

Now you will get a warning that the drivers are not digitally signed. Most 3rd party drivers aren't, but these drivers are safe, so don't fret! Almost done. Under model you should see



If you do not, you have the wrong drivers selected. Post here if you need help. Anyways, click next. Let the wizard take over from here. When its finished, you'll get this screen. w00t!





Almost done! Now, I doubt we really want a 1MB RAMDrive. So lets fix it! Go back to control panel and open "Device Manager." In Device Manager, find the device called "RAM Drive" and open the submenu. Double click on the device under that category. I have 2 because I installed twice for this guide, you ONLY NEED TO DO INSTALL THEM ONCE, AND YOU SHOULD ONLY HAVE ONE LISTED. I have the nonfunctioning one disabled.



Anyways, after double clicking on RAMDrive [QSoft] Enterprise, you'll be in the properties menu. Click on the "Ram Disk properties" tab, and you will get this screen. Change the disk size to 64MB, unless you bought this software, in which case you can set it higher (The drivers will intentionally crash and you will get the "Invalid Function" error if you set it above 64MB with the free version). At the bottom, make sure you leave "Restart RAMDisk when pushing ok" unchecked, as I have had problems with RAMDisk restarting while windows is running. This may just be an issue with Vista. You can change the drive letter as well if you want. You can't change the filesystem in the free version though.



Now then, reboot!

Now take a look at your drive. It should be something like 63.9MB and labeled B:.



As you can see, I lied. Mine is only 32MB :D But if you have 1GB of RAM or more, you should be safe with 64MB.

Nearly finished. From the "RAMDriv\ENG" folder, run "RAMDiskImage.exe." Set it up to save and load from an image file called "RAMDiskImage.img" located in the root of C:, like in the image here (In this image though, the drive I have selected is F:. You don't have to use C: if you have another partition/disk that you want to use.).



Now check the box labeled "Save in compatible format"



Now check the box labeled "Synchroneous RAMDisk Image Write." Apply all the changes and your set.



Now play around with your new drive. When you reboot properly everything should be fine, however if crash or lose power, the data may be lost, so always keep it backed up incase the image doesn't write properly.



I tested the drive with winamp. From the RAMDrive, I got winamp up and running it 1.8 seconds. From a freshly formatted/defragged drive, it started up in 3.3 seconds. Not too shabby if you ask me, and considering my rig is dated, on a more modern rig the improvement should be more significant, particularly on disk dependent programs. Most programs execute instantly ;D I even moved the CCleaner installer to the drive and installation was nearly instant.

I'm not that big in shell folders, so I didn't move the firefox appdata out of my profile, and thus didn't really receive a big increase in Firefox (it is noticeable though). I did get Power Defragmenter to pop up instantly though! :D

So experiment and play with RAMDrive a little (it gets lonely sometimes). If you decide you don't want it, uninstallation is a snap. Simply go back into the Device Manager, right click on RAMDrive [ QSoft ] Enterprise, and click on uninstall. Confirm that you wish to uninstall the drivers, and reboot. Your all set!




*** HOLY CRAP! I just tried Project64, an N64 emulator and got a HUGE increase in performance all around, I'd say an additional 22 FPS! Guess this thing was more dependent on the hard disk that I thought.

[gvblake22]

WOW! I never knew anything like that existed, that's a pretty interesting idea if you need a quick fix of speed for something. Is there any way to have it automatically populate the RAMDisk space you allocated with the program or two you want to run or do you have to manually add the files to the disk upon startup of the computer?

[screwballl]

looks cool... I would say on systems that have say 3-4GB, too bad you couldn't set say 2GB of it as a Ramdrive and set your system swap file there...

[Panda Man]

Originally Posted by screwballl

looks cool... I would say on systems that have say 3-4GB, too bad you couldn't set say 2GB of it as a Ramdrive and set your system swap file there...

Kind of redundant but that would rock too :D

blake - Yea, I messes up the guide. Check the box that says "Synchroneous Diskimage write" and check the box that says "save in compatible format" in this menu.




Maybe I'll start writing guides and such for HL :D I did this b/c I was bored but it was still fun.

[gvblake22]

Originally Posted by Panda Man

blake - Yea, I messes up the guide. Check the box that says "Synchroneous Diskimage write" and check the box that says "save in compatible format" in this menu.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2.../ramdisk01.jpg

OK, but what exactly does that do? Does it just save whatever you have on the virtual drive to your actual hard drive when you shut down and then reload it back when the computer starts back up again?

[Tyreal]

Do you have any benchmarks that could show just how fast this is?

[Panda Man]

Originally Posted by gvblake22

OK, but what exactly does that do? Does it just save whatever you have on the virtual drive to your actual hard drive when you shut down and then reload it back when the computer starts back up again?

You pretty much hit the nail on the head. It'll sync the .img file and the actual drive.

Originally Posted by Tyreal

Do you have any benchmarks that could show just how fast this is?

nope. I don't have any apps that really benefits from this either, as I don't have the resources to actually go above 32mb. If someone has a rig with about 3GB of RAM, test it with a game or something and let us know how much faster this is. Rest assured you do notice a difference

EDIT - oh yea, the full version I think you can set it 75% of your total RAM, so if you like, buy it!

EDIT2 - HOLY CRAP! I just tried Project64, an N64 emulator and got a HUGE increase in performance all around, I'd say an additional 22 FPS! Guess this thing was more dependent on the hard disk that I thought.

[yurimxpxman]

Originally Posted by Panda Man

EDIT - oh yea, the full version I think you can set it 75% of your total RAM, so if you like, buy it!

Linux has supported RAM disks for about a decade. The irony is that there aren't as many uses for it in Linux since most of the games that it supports aren't bottlenecked by the hard drive but by the CPU or GPU. Then again, I've heard of people loading their desktop environment and their favorite apps to the RAM disk for a faster experience for specific tasks (think of Firefox opening instantaneously).

[Panda Man]

Originally Posted by yurimxpxman

Linux has supported RAM disks for about a decade. The irony is that there aren't as many uses for it in Linux since most of the games that it supports aren't bottlenecked by the hard drive but by the CPU or GPU. Then again, I've heard of people loading their desktop environment and their favorite apps to the RAM disk for a faster experience for specific tasks (think of Firefox opening instantaneously).

Yea I saw some stuff for linux RAMDisks. And I knew the second I posted this you would chime in, penguin boy

[yurimxpxman]

Originally Posted by Panda Man

Yea I saw some stuff for linux RAMDisks. And I knew the second I posted this you would chime in, penguin boy

heh. I resisted the urge at first, but you know I had to come in at some point hehehe. Nice tutorial btw I nominate it for a homepage article.