# Any hardware ramdrives anymore?



## Lazzer408 (Jan 4, 2012)

I'm still facinated by devices like this.

http://www.acard.com/english/fb01-specification-print.jsp?idno_no=270

Ram is dirt cheap. The PCB and interface components are not costly either. In the link I posted, that devices biggest flaw is the CF card for backup. Replace the CF with a 2.5" HDD or SSD and you would have an impressive product.

Mass storage using system memory isn't new. There's quite a few products having 10TB or more storage available in rack-mount enclosures but, like so many other technologies, it doesn't take foothold in the consumer market. :shadedshu

In the mean time I've allocated a small part of my system memory to a ramdrive. It's used for Window's and IE's temp files. The increase in performance is just awesum. I don't necessarily feel any improvement in general Window's operations but application and driver installs are ridiculously fast. I have 8gb of memory and have 3gb allocated to the ramdrive (test was done with 2gb). You should try it. The ramdrive benchmarks at 7-9GB/s vs. the 450MB/s of my SSD raid-0.


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## N-Gen (Jan 4, 2012)

I was trying to get ramdisk on my laptop which has 8gb mem and is used just for school...couldn't manage for some odd reason. What application did you use?


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## Sasqui (Jan 4, 2012)

The second post down has some info for ya:

http://forums.storagereview.com/index.php/topic/30401-do-ramdrives-with-sata-60gbs-and-ddr3-exist/


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## nt300 (Jan 4, 2012)

Its better to find a Ramdrive like this one but with DDR3 support instead of DDR2 which now cost more money. But interface needs a speed boost, SATA3 is not fast enough. Maybe USB 4 in the future or PCIe 3.


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## N-Gen (Jan 4, 2012)

That's the one I tried and didn't succeed...maybe it was because it was early during the day and I was half asleep. Will give it a go as soon as I get some time.


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## AsRock (Jan 4, 2012)

N-Gen said:


> I was trying to get ramdisk on my laptop which has 8gb mem and is used just for school...couldn't manage for some odd reason. What application did you use?



Try the program here
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152930&highlight=hardlinks


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## lemonadesoda (Jan 4, 2012)

IMO, with x64 and modern DDR3 sizes and prices, I would forget hardware ramdrives for the consumer or enthusiast. SATA and the additional hardware costs make ramdrives expensive and slow compared to ramdisks. 

If you are running x86 with a memory boundary at 4GB then you just cant implement large ramdisks.  Here, ramdrives are still useful.  I have two gigabyte i-RAMs in RAID0 over SATA providing an 8GB ramdrive for pagefile and temps. Unfortunately, because these boards are so old, the interfaces are SATA 150. So even in RAID0 they theoretically max at 300MB/s which isnt any faster than a modern SSD.  However, random read/write and access times are still better than SSD, and infinitely better than the HDD in the system.


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Jan 4, 2012)

It's cause they suck. I've seen multiple reviews for such products over the years and they were always pretty slow and horribly expensive. Last one I saw was pitted against an SSD. Was pretty much worthless, and cost a lot. You'd do much better just using a program to create one on your system ram and having it backed up to your main drive. Add a backup battery for power outages and you're set.


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## Deleted member 3 (Jan 4, 2012)

LAN_deRf_HA said:


> It's cause they suck. I've seen multiple reviews for such products over the years and they were always pretty slow and horribly expensive. Last one I saw was pitted against an SSD. Was pretty much worthless, and cost a lot. You'd do much better just using a program to create one on your system ram and having it backed up to your main drive. Add a backup battery for power outages and you're set.


I've seen some impressive reviews in the past. The iRam and the likes did quite well. Expensive, yes. The main difference between system RAM and a RAMdrive like these is the fact that you can't boot off your system RAM.


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Jan 4, 2012)

As recall they sucked across the board. Even latency was just barely beating SSDs. Which I don't really understand unless it's an interface or controller issue. Either way I'd stick to system ram drives. They'll always be faster.


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## Deleted member 3 (Jan 4, 2012)

Use google to recall more correctly.


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## overclocking101 (Jan 4, 2012)

man I might try and do this but im gonna have to get like 12gb or something.


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## Mussels (Jan 4, 2012)

why not something like the OCZ revodrive?


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Jan 5, 2012)

Ok. The ACARD is .01 faster than a X25. This is how it's always been on the reviews I've read for these. They just suck when they use dedicated hardware.


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## Deleted member 3 (Jan 5, 2012)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/1742


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Jan 5, 2012)

The battery is nice? Doesn't look to impressive. Would be able to make more of it if there were SSDs in there, but that's from 2005.


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## Lazzer408 (Jan 5, 2012)

It always seems the ramdrives in the past have i/o limitations. Poor controller implementation is my guess. There's no reason they can't use more then one SATA port or use a pcie slot to increase it's throughput though.


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## ramdrive (Oct 21, 2013)

I am aware that this thread is rather old but I just want to put a new idea out there.

With today mobo’s supporting 32Gb or 64Gb of DDR3 one can think that 7Gb/s reads/writes on that ram would be nice to use as a temp drive. But wait, how about the BIOS be able to setup a ram drive ? Imagine having that ability now you could use a 32Gb ram drive for your OS. Yes, it's volatile so that means it needs a backup mechanism. Coupled with an SSD you can sacrifice some time at boot and shutdown for that backup process. This is not the best idea but to use a ram drive set directly from BIOS, using system RAM, sounds appealing.


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## Lazzer408 (Oct 28, 2013)

That's what I've been doing for years now using Dataram's Ramdisk utility.

Motherboard manufacturers are now including ramdisk utilities as a selling feature.  Asrock called it "xfast ram" as one example.


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## Novulux (Oct 28, 2013)

I find Softperfect's RAM Disk to give the best speeds, and I use it often for various game servers or extra boost in video recording.


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## AsRock (Oct 28, 2013)

Lazzer408 said:


> That's what I've been doing for years now using Dataram's Ramdisk utility.
> 
> Motherboard manufacturers are now including ramdisk utilities as a selling feature.  Asrock called it "xfast ram" as one example.



But ASRock XFast ram is no were as good as Dataram's and it's free too if you don't need over 4GB.  But i guess it does  the simple stuff.


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## Frick (Oct 28, 2013)

I toyed around with a RAMdisk during the glorious days I had 8GB, and all I know is that EU3 didn't launch any faster.


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## AsRock (Oct 28, 2013)

Frick said:


> I toyed around with a RAMdisk during the glorious days I had 8GB, and all I know is that EU3 didn't launch any faster.



Dunno about EU3 but i have noticed boosts doing it with games.  How ever i finding that my SSD's are loading games to fast as you know those hints\tips and comments you get just before the area loads well it loaded to fast so get to read them lol.

Best i have noticed was with Arma with the evolution\domination maps when loads of crap loads\spawns on map that it actually makes a dedicated server smoother.


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