# Use a RAMdrive to increase Windows performance and SSD lifespan.



## Lazzer408 (Jan 4, 2012)

Well I had a great write-up going for this tweak but it fell victum to the Backspace key. (MS you #@$%suckers) Unfortunatly I'm to frustrated to rewrite it. Sorry.

Anyways...

Here's the link to Dataram's RAMdisc utility for creating the ramdrive. http://memory.dataram.com/__downloads/memory/ramdisk/Dataram_RAMDisk_V3.5.130R20.msi

Here's ghacks walkthrough. http://www.ghacks.net/2010/06/10/use-a-ram-disk-to-reduce-writes-on-solid-state-drives/

The just of this is making a virtual drive in your system's memory and using it for file caching, temp storage, and security. Anything writen to the ramdrive, like cookies, will be dumped when the system is powered off or rebooted. You can point your OS, browsers, and other applications to use this drive for their temp files. This will significantly improve access speed to those files. 20x faster then an SSD. (400MB/s vs. 8000MB/s). I haven't tried putting the pagefile there because I have my pagefile disabled. Doing this will relieve an SSD from some thrashing.

Here are some claimed benifets from another retail retail ramdrive product's site. http://www.softperfect.com/products/ramdisk/

Five reasons to use a RAM disk:
1.Higher PC performance. Using a fast in-memory disk for temporary data boosts PC performance up, provided you have got a sufficient amount of RAM.
2.Reduced file system fragmentation. The file system on your disks will be far less fragmented as temporary files are never written to the disk.
3.Reduced wear-and-tear of the physical disk. As temporarily files are not written to the disk, there will be fewer read/write cycles, which is especially important for Solid State Drives (SSD) installed in some laptops. 
4.Less junk on the hard disk. Often software applications create temporary files that remain undeleted although no longer needed.
5.Less noise and heat from the hard disk. The system will use the hard disk less intensively as it would storing temporary files on the disk.


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## Super XP (Jan 4, 2012)

This is good to know, thanks 

So now we know how to allocate some DRAM for some RAM Drive. I have loads of extra unused ram according to Task Manager. 16GB is a lot, and I want more for some reason lol.


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## n0tiert (Jan 4, 2012)

added , lets see how it performs


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## AsRock (Jan 4, 2012)

dataram's ramdrive program is sweet.  Been using it for some time now with Hardlinks http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152930&highlight=hardlinks


It's free to is you only want to use up to 4GB and was only $15 when i actually brought it as i wanted to have a dedi server in ram and it made a difference for sure as when it was hosting 20 people playing a domi mission every one was reported no issue's..

Were as some servers have issue's as they try to spit all the info out as fast as possible when the spawning happens when a town is taken over. .


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## Morgoth (Jan 4, 2012)

would it be usefull to use a 8gb pci-e ssd as a temp storage disk? or is ramdisk allot bether?


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## Lazzer408 (Jan 5, 2012)

Morgoth said:


> would it be usefull to use a 8gb pci-e ssd as a temp storage disk? or is ramdisk allot bether?



A ramdisk is much much faster. 7000MB/s read, 9000MB/s write in my test.


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## hat (Jan 5, 2012)

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=107670


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## phanbuey (Jan 5, 2012)

These have been around sine like windows 3.1, and are a bit like the "TORNADO" air intake booster for your car.

They dont really work to increase speed.  At all.  Edit: except maybe for the post that hat put up... 

Most games and applications cache textures and commonly accessed files and such in ram, which is why you won't see a huge boost in either windows performance or in-application performance  (also why having an SSD never increases FPS).  The only exception is temp files, but that really is about it.


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## nt300 (Jan 5, 2012)

Is it possible to create a hardware ramdisk?


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## johnspack (Jan 6, 2012)

I've been playing with ramdrives and ram diskcaches a lot in the last little while,  since I have the ram to play with.   Setting a good size ram diskcache on a game drive or partition does really help performance in loading with games.  For instance,  first time you load MW3,  it will take the normal time,  and when you load a level in the game it takes a normal amount of time,  like 10-15secs or more.  If you get killed and have to reload,  it's instant the 2nd time.  If you quit the game and decide to restart it,  it's almost instant as well.  I find you need at least 2gbs of ram diskcache per game you want to run off that drive/partition for maximum performance.  Also,  granularity(block size) and type of algorithm will impact performance,  so you need to learn how to set up the cache properly.  All I know is,  from now on I don't go without the caches,  they really do make a difference when done properly!


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## Morgoth (Jan 14, 2012)

how the hell do i get this?





it says hit pause button but it does nothing


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## daimonass (Jan 14, 2012)

So it is worth it only then have SSD ?


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## Lazzer408 (Jan 14, 2012)

The benefits are there for all drives.


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## mauser1891 (Aug 5, 2013)

*re: RAMDrive...*

Hello Folks,


In Win 8 Pro, due to the 32G of DDR3.  I am also using Xfired 7770's w/o issue and I am using a 42" HDTV as a monitor.  My FX-8350 is serving me very well, and it scales from 1.4Ghz to 4Ghz depending on the demand. I am using a SSD as my primary, while a SSHD (Hybrid) is my storage drive.  I am not going to post benchmark info and such, as the topic is RAMDisk.

I have used a 20G RAMDisk to play Guild Wars 2 with my TMP/TEMP folders moved to the RAMDisk concurrently.  Though I returned GW2 back to it's home partition.  I did this out of curiousity.
Though I am curious on how things will be in a very large zerg vs zerg conflict (WVW).  Not yet tested.
Very interesting about doing a GW2 install is that a person can start the install, stop it.  Copy the GW2.dat to the install location and the resume the install.  When resumed it compares the GW2.dat to a final size and considers it done.  Thus a copy and paste works very well, and unlike other games a person can just make a copy of just the GW2.dat and it is backup.

I was going to run Battlefield 3 on it, but the base install of BF3 is about 17G installed and additional amount for Armored Kill.  I chose not to test it because I felt it would not leave me enough resources to effectively play it.

So my next first person shooter that I will use is ArmA 3 Beta, the current install size is rather small as far as I can tell.  I am very tired at the time of this post.  I will have to confirm the install size prior to creating a RAMDisk for testing it.

I am extremely pleased with using a RAMDisk and plan on upgrading the mobo to acquire more RAM.  Newegg has already done a video clip on the Radeon RAMDisk, so if you want to watch it @  http://youtu.be/C9IZQb5bNIo


Thank You,
mauser1891


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## RejZoR (Aug 5, 2013)

I'm using AMD's RAMdisk for the browser. I just installed the browser in the RAM drive and also moved the cache there. Only profile is left on the actual SSD. Though i wanted to move everything in it, but the risk of losing data on crashes is just too high (power loss is not an issue since it's laptop). When i shut it down, data is saved to disk in a one bigger chunk and restored on next system start. It made the browser quite a lot more responsive on a weaker laptop.


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## drdeathx (Aug 5, 2013)

Ramdisk and other programs have been around for a long time and old news. Asrock includes their version with their bords. The read/write speeds are blazing fast..... Here was my results over a year ago using 2600K/ GSkill Tridents at 2400MHz








phanbuey said:


> These have been around sine like windows 3.1, and are a bit like the "TORNADO" air intake booster for your car.
> 
> They dont really work to increase speed.  At all.  Edit: except maybe for the post that hat put up...
> 
> Most games and applications cache textures and commonly accessed files and such in ram, which is why you won't see a huge boost in either windows performance or in-application performance  (also why having an SSD never increases FPS).  The only exception is temp files, but that really is about it.



I think game and texture loading is faster.


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## stinger608 (Aug 5, 2013)

drdeathx said:


> Asrock includes their version with their bords.



Really? What are they calling it? I just went to the download page for my mITX AsRock board and I fail to see anything indicating a RAMdrive


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## lyndonguitar (Aug 5, 2013)

I have 8GB RAM in my PC, If I add 8GB more and use it solely for ramdisk would I get noticable performance in windows? and maybe games too? I only use HDD's btw, no raid


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## TheOne (Aug 5, 2013)

stinger608 said:


> Really? What are they calling it? I just went to the download page for my mITX AsRock board and I fail to see anything indicating a RAMdrive



http://www.asrock.com/feature/xfast/xfastram/index.asp


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## mauser1891 (Aug 5, 2013)

*RAMDisk, but Revo Drive curious...*

Hello Folks,


Yes, the load times a very nice and I didn't bother to post any benchmarks.
I did buy the Radeon RAMDisk, full version since it was cheap and I was curious how it would perform for gaming.  Though I do some transcoding.

drdeathx I have been very curious on how that Revo has been going for you?  I was considering one of those since it uses the PCIe, but was hoping that there would be a revised or improved version since there are some newer controllers on the market now.

Odds are I will be acquiring a newer mobo that has support for 64G of DDR.  But remains to be seen.


Thank You,
mauser1891


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## Lazzer408 (Aug 12, 2013)

I have a pair of 160gb Fusion IO drives. Anyone interested?


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## Sasqui (Aug 12, 2013)

Subbed.  I have 16GB of RAM and probably have never used more than 6 lol.  Aside from browsers, have to play around with different applications to see where temp files are stored (and if I can change)


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## mauser1891 (Aug 13, 2013)

*TMP/TEMP SysEnvro (RAMDisk Storage)*

Hello Folks,


I am using Win 8 Pro.  But the changing the the TMP/TEMP locations are easy enough to change. In the picture it shows my "stock" setting on C:\TEMP\
I have installed various apps/programs onto the RAMDisk itself.

Win 8 Pro;

1) go left bottom and right click will pull up a menu
2) select System in the list and click System
3) System comes up, click on Advanced System Settings
4) There will be a Environmental Variables, click
5) From there you can scroll down, select and edit via the bottom menu
6) I selected and editted C:\TEMP\ for both TMP and TEMP to R:\TEMP\ (R: = RAMDisk)

Win 7 will also have this ability, though probably easier via Control Panel.  It has been a bit since I have run Win 7, which was on my laptop.  The laptop has Debian 7 installed currently, which I waited for Debian to finally move to a kernel that was 3+ for support for my wireless.  Debian has a slow pace compared to others such as *buntu or Mint distro's.  But that is another topic.
SSD warranties and life spans are far greater than the "1st Gens".


Thank You,
mauser1891


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## chriscbd_19 (Aug 2, 2020)

I have read in windows 98 books that if you move the  following to a ramdisk/ramdrive which are desktop,temp files,and start menu you'll notice speed but I haven't figured out how to move all of windows 10 startmenu is my issue or how much ram to allocate enough ram that I won't have problems with downloads and programs needing temp space for there temporary files.


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## mauser1891 (Aug 2, 2020)

Hello Folks,


My old FX based system is still in service.  In the last year I finally got the chance to upgrade to a Ryzen 5 3600 based system with 32GB of DDR4 at 2933.
I've migrated to just using 2GB PrimoCache configuration for all my drives.  Though I can change it to a 4GB configuration.
Which are comprised of a 120GB boot SSD, general purpose 256GB SSD, 1TB M.2 and still using my old 1TB HD for archiving.  Thus 4 storage devices total.

My USR and SYS folders are now located in a TEMP folder on the bottom tier of my boot drive.  
All downloads are directed to the 1TB HD as it will write faster than most download rates for my connection.
Paging is system managed on my fastest drive which is the 1TB M.2 with a small 1MB minimal page on the boot drive for small dumps.
My favorite games are installed to the M.2 while the secondaries are installed to the 256GB SSD.  Other games that I don't play very often, I just install them as needed.
As you are probably aware that Microsoft Updates are storage dependent thus I suggest using your largest storage device as to avoid any update issues.


Thank You,
mauser1891


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## TxGrin (Aug 2, 2020)

I use PrimoCache it works well.






						PrimoCache - Excellent Software Caching Solution to Accelerate Storage
					

Home page of PrimoCache product which is a supplementary software caching scheme to improve the system performance.



					www.romexsoftware.com


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## TheLostSwede (Aug 2, 2020)

Necro thread!


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