How to optimize Windows performance by using RAM
-disk – a virtual disk created by third-party software that functions due to excess RAM? Below we will talk about carrying out basic operations for the purpose of such optimization. Let's take a closer look at how to create RAM-disk and transfer the contents of system folders to it "Temp"
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1. Creating a RAM disk
For creating RAM-disk in our case the program will be used. It was chosen because of its ease of use, support for the Russian language, but most importantly - due to the ability to save data RAM-disk on hard drive. Let us remind you that RAM can work with data within one session of working with a computer. After the system is rebooted, stored on RAM-disk data disappears. To solve this problem, the developers of some programs to implement RAM-disk equip their products with mechanisms for saving data to a special file on the hard drive. When the system is restarted, the saved data is accordingly retrieved and takes its place on RAM-disk. The ability to save data is an optional condition for a program that implements on a Windows system RAM-disk, if the latter will be used only for storing temporary files (contents of “Temp” folders, browser cache and temporary data of other programs) . But if on RAM The disk will store portable programs, profiles and working directories of browsers, other programs and games; the presence of a function for saving data on the hard drive will be of fundamental importance.
– a paid product, at the time of writing the article the cost is $29 . But the developers of this program offer to test the fully functional trial version for free for a whole month. This period is more than enough to understand the effectiveness of such optimization and, accordingly, make a choice - RAM-disc or SSD .
So, let's download and launch the program. Add a new one RAM -disk.
Fill out the creation form RAM-disk. First of all, we indicate the disk size. Important: this size should not exceed the unused remainder of RAM at the time of maximum computer load . It is advisable not to leave the system with less than 6 GB . Next, select any of the free letters for the disk and set the file system format NTFS. Click "OK".
Returning to the main window , click menu "Image" and choose "Create an image". Creating and connecting a format image IMG - this is the very mechanism for ensuring data safety RAM -disk mentioned above. It is in this image will periodically record data so that it is available after Windows restarts, and not just during the current session. What, as mentioned, will happen when implementing RAM-disk programs without support for a data saving mechanism.
In the column you need to write the path to image file – specify the disk partition, folder and come up with a name for the file. If it is planned that RAM- the disk will be used to store some important data, respectively, image file must be created on a non-system disk partition. In the column "Size" indicate the same size that was set for the RAM -disk. For graph "Format", again, select the value "NTFS". Click "OK".
We will receive a notification that the image has been created.
If in the future RAM - the disk will be destroyed for some reason and will take away valuable information; it can be retrieved by mounting the newly created one IMG -image – either with the help of the , or through any other program that works with this format.
So, RAM -disk is created, IMG -the image has been created, now they need to be tied to each other and configured. We return to the main program window. Here in the context menu on RAM-disk select .
A setup window will open. In the column we write, accordingly, the path to the newly created image IMG . Next is an important point - you must check the box "Save content" . Click the button below "Additional".
Below in the column we set the time period through which the data RAM-disc must be written to IMG-image. In our case, the optimal option was chosen - every half hour. If on RAM- the disk is not supposed to store particularly important data; you can set a longer interval. In any case, before turning off or restarting the computer, all data will be saved in IMG-image. Click "OK".
Next, let's return to the previous settings window. Click here below "OK", then in the window that appears, confirm the application of the parameters and launch the associated remount operation RAM-disk.
That's all. will automatically boot with Windows and run in the background RAM-disk. At any time, the program can be found in the system tray to change settings RAM-disk or not at all delete it. It can be removed very easily– using the option, respectively, in the context menu.
Intentional deletion RAM-disk does not result in the destruction of the associated IMG-image. It will still be in its place until it is removed manually. From periodic automatic saving of data to IMG-we can refuse the image and save data manually only if necessary. For these purposes in the window there is a special button.
Created RAM -the drive will now appear in Windows Explorer as a regular drive. The possibilities for its use, in principle, can be anything, as long as everything happens within the framework of the allocated volume. On RAM-disks with small volumes usually redirect storage cache (or entire profiles) browsers, save paths and other game data, working directories of bulky programs. But first of all RAM-disk send folders storing temporary Windows files - "Temp". On the performance of the disk on which system folders are stored "Temp", the performance of both third-party programs and Windows as a whole partly depends.
2. Transferring the “Temp” system folders to the RAM disk
Folders "Temp" located on the system disk along the path:
- C:\Windows\Temp,
- C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Temp.
Their transfer to RAM-disk is done by editing the values of Windows environment variables. For some system processes the company Microsoft provided a standard mechanism for changing values - in particular, changing the storage location of folder contents "Temp".
First, create a folder "Temp" on the destination disk - on RAM -disk. Next, press the keys Win + Pause. In the system settings window on the left, select additional options. In the window that opens, go down and press the button "Environment Variables…".
The upper half of the window is responsible for the user profile environment variables. Editing values "TEMP" And "TMP" we will change the folder path "Temp" as part of the catalog "AppData". Select a value "TEMP" and press the button "Change".
We carry out the same operation with the value "TMP", specify the same folder path "Temp" on RAM -disk.
Next, we move to the lower half of the variable environment window - to system variables. Here we also select "TEMP" And "TMP", these are the values corresponding to the folder "Temp" in the catalog "Windows". Select the values one by one "TEMP" And "TMP" and for each of them press the button "Change". Instead of the current path, write a folder "Temp" on RAM -disk. In the end it should work 4 changed values.
After editing the environment variable values reboot Windows.
Moving folder contents "Temp" on RAM The disk also makes access to them convenient. Which will come in handy for cases of allocation under RAM-small volume disk random access memory. Folders "Temp" It is necessary to periodically clean them, because they often grow to incredible volumes. You can also clear folders "Temp" according to their previous path on disk WITH to free up extra space on it.
Good day, dear friends, acquaintances, readers, passing personalities and all, all, all. As you understand, today we will talk about what is ram disk, why it might be needed, how to set it up and use it.
Articles are rarely published yet (but they are published :-)), since a huge amount of work is being done in all areas of sites, I think, the line you know. Over time, we will return not just to the previous pace, but also to a greater frequency of publications, so that, so to speak, you do not get bored.
By the way, just one of these days long-term construction projects will be crawling out, namely a site-about-website-creation and a hard version. Actually, the delay with the articles is due to their active revision. Well, yes, a new version of the design is being slowly prepared website, as well as the promised goodies with a mobile version and all that stuff.
For the first time in the history of the project, I want, within the framework of the article, to remind you that you can, in some way, support its development, funds for which are especially needed now. However, the matter is up to you, and therefore, aside from the lyrics and organizational moments, let’s move on to the very topic of the article, i.e. directly to what it is ram disk.
Where, in the first screenshot, is, in fact, the little defenseless RAID 0 from two disks, and on the second directly RAM-disk. As you probably understood, the difference between the speeds, roughly speaking, differs somewhere in 10 once to the side RAM-disk, let alone access time ( Access Time) I am generally silent. Speed, of course, was measured according to one of the articles, namely "".
Who will benefit from such RAM disk performance?
Yes, in general, everyone who has a lot of RAM, especially since it now costs a penny (from 300 rubles per gigabyte DDR3). In addition, it is perfect for Windows 10.
It will be especially convenient for those who 8 - a gigabyte at home, like mine. And the owner of the servers... However, the latter themselves know what to do with all this :)
Why is such power of a ram disk needed?
Yes, in general, because the last thing in the system that really loses in performance is the hard drives. Therefore, I personally recommend dragging disk-dependent programs to RAM-disks, i.e. the very ones we are talking about.
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There, even the same one, my favorite Firefox, being cleverly transferred along with the profile (I’ll tell you separately), it flies like I didn’t fly with, although it seemed like it was much faster :)
In general, given the price of, I personally still don’t really understand why they haven’t, at least partially, replaced the usual hdd, especially since the difference in speed is simply colossal.
What does a ram disk look like in practice?
Very simple, namely... like a regular disk.
More precisely, the program creates a virtual drive that uses part of the RAM and presents itself to the user like regular partitions in the system, i.e. there is nothing complicated or specific about it, but from a practical point of view it’s just lovely :)
However, aside from the lyrics. Let's get to practice.
Download, install and configure ram disk
Actually, as you understand from the title, we will talk about a wonderful free program (with a slight limitation on the maximum size of the disk created) called Dataram RAMDisk, which, in fact, helps everything described above come to life.
I would like to note that it is almost the only one in its segment that is free, of this kind of programs (and also sane for workers), a miracle of programmer thought. Even everyone is supported Windows. Unfortunately, there is no Russian interface, but this is not critical, since everything is quite simple there and I will tell you everything now.
You can download the program here by clicking on the button " Download It" on the left. Installation is extremely simple (consists of only " Next"ov"), so we will not dwell on it.
So, after installation and launch (double click on the shortcut " RAMDisk Configuration Utility") program, you will see the following window for setting up such a thing as ram disk:
With some differences, because I am showing an already configured version of the program (it’s difficult to show from scratch, because the machine where the review is being written is now actively using the section and it doesn’t seem possible for me to stop, because it will be difficult to write further :)).
Let's immediately go through how to set everything up so that it works and as in the screenshots.
"Settings" tab and your ram disk
As you can see from the screenshot above, our magic program, first of all, plaintively asks you to set the size of the virtual partition in the field Disk Size. For trial purposes, you can make the partition size for now 1 GB, in order to test what it’s like.
Next, select the type of organization of the file system, namely what is indicated to the right of the dimensions, i.e. FAT32/FAT16(if you can't choose FAT32, then we leave FAT16), and then the boot sector type ( Windows boot sector).
Note:
Don't rush to press " Start RAMDisk" (thus creating a virtual disk), because first you need to configure everything correctly.
Now let's go to "Load and Save" tab" and here we set the following parameters:
You need to check the box here " Load Disk Image at Startup" And " Save Disk Image on Shutdown".
The trick is that so that the contents of our ram the disk was not lost after turning off the computer (and, as you hope you know, RAM is cleared during reboots/shutdowns, unlike hard drives), our high-speed partition will be written to a file of the appropriate size, for which, in fact, the tick we put is indicated " Save Disk Image on Shutdown".
The first of them loads the contents of this very file when the system starts.
- Path where the file is written ram disk (equal in volume to what we set on the first tab) is specified under each of the checkboxes by clicking on the folder image. The paths must be the same;
- Alternatively, you can also check the box " AutoSave" and set the time for constant auto-saving to disk in a file, which will help avoid problems with an unexpected reboot, and all sorts of other sudden horrors with the computer. I don’t have to, because this doesn’t happen in principle;
- You can also assign some sonorous name to your RAM disk (by checking the " Disk Label" and specifying the name). Create a temporary directory (" Create TEMP directory) not necessary.
Well on the tab"Options" let's check the last two boxes we need, namely, " Do not create backup file when saving disk image" And " Do not compress image file on NTFS filesystems".
The first one, which "Do not create", allows you not to create a backup copy of the file when saving a disk image, so that there is no mess of saves and problems with the load on the disk subsystem. The second one, which "Do not compress", do not compress the image file in the file system NTFS, which I think is worth it to all of you.
If you wish, you can also put " Manually set RAMdisk timeout value" is a parameter that allows you to manually set the required identification time ram disk (the time when it is recognized by the OS as a virtual disk), which is convenient if you have a problem and the system boots slowly.
That's it, having completed all the settings, you can launch the disk using the " button Start RAMDisk".
Afterword
I deliberately omitted the options for using this disk in RAM, mentioning only briefly the transfer of the browser and disk-dependent programs. The essence of this “intention” is not only that I don’t want to make a big mess out of the article, but I also decided to hold a small competition, namely...
- The author of the most interesting and correct idea for using such a mega-fast disk will receive from the author and the project an excellent, nice gift, pleasant and far away Not good-for-nothing ;)
- Write your ideas in the comments, as well as questions, additions, thanks and anything else that you like to write :)
That's all for now, I ran to finish the long-term construction, so tomorrow, by evening, we can expect either both new sites, or one for sure, fortunately, even the server for them has already been purchased for a long time;)
RAM drive, RAM disk (disk in memory), electronic disk - computer technology that allows you to store data in high-speed RAM as on a block device (disk). Can be implemented both in software and in hardware.
The idea of using semiconductor memory as the main storage medium in a PC did not arise today. Its implementation is possible both as a separate device and as a virtual disk in RAM.
The effectiveness of this approach can be debated; there are different opinions: some talk about an increase in productivity by orders of magnitude, others deny the feasibility of RAM Disk in principle.
Having read some information on the Internet and tried using memory as a disk on my computer, conducting appropriate tests, my experiments and those of other users showed that with a sufficient amount of RAM, using a RAM Disk almost always has a positive effect.
The number of accesses to the hard drive decreases (the HDD resource increases), the execution speed of some applications increases, although not hundreds of times, as some promise.
For example, we need to work with photographs or a video file, we write it (them) to a disk in memory and work with these files at the speed and speed of the memory we have. True, there is a nuance: the memory must be commensurate with the files and the cache for processing them. And if the power suddenly goes out, all your work can be lost. So we use UPS or a laptop :)
Many browsers store a lot of all sorts of junk in databases that hardly use the computer’s memory, as a result, after a month of use, even typing an address becomes torture - the hard drive creaks, letters are typed in a second. All these problems are removed.
Main advantages:
# Extremely high access speed (up to several gigabytes per second);
# No delays during random access;
# Implementation without the use of additional hardware components;
Main disadvantages:
# Consumption of an extremely valuable resource (RAM);
# Small capacities (if there are 500-1000 GB hard drives on the market, RAM modules are calculated in units of gigabytes);
# Loss of content on shutdown (can be partially overcome by saving content to disk when shutting down, but the risk of losing information due to an unexpected power outage still exists);
Attention! I warn you - this article is for advanced users, there are many pitfalls! So everything you do, you do only at your own peril and risk.
So, the idea is simple. Make a RAMDisk (virtual “disk” in the computer’s memory) and force programs to store their work there.
1. Download one of the programs for creating a virtual disk in RAM - RAMDisk “\Enterprise\”. Among all similar products, RAMDisk “\Enterprise\” stands out, if only because the Russian version of RAMDisk “\Enterprise\” is distributed free of charge, and also has sufficient functionality and stability.
RAM Disk: http://ramdisk.nm.ru/ramdiskent -rus.htm
The software consists of a RAMDisk driver (RAMDriv.sys), an installer support library and property page (RAMDriv.dll) and an installation file (RAMDriv.inf), which together, through the “Hardware Setup” wizard, allow you to install RAMDisk on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Server 2003 and Vista.
For Windows 7 - go to Toolbar, System and Security, Device Manager. In the Action menu, select install old device. And manually point to the driver file.
In other systems, I think you will figure out how to install it yourself.
The settings are set through the RAMDisk properties in “\Device Properties\” through “\Device Manager\” Windows. New values can be activated without rebooting.
Click configure operations with image file and create an image file.
To ensure that our data is not lost, check the “Save image when unloading driver” checkbox. Booting and shutting down the system will take a little longer, but for us the main thing is fast work.
If you work with photo or video data and don’t want to accidentally lose it, you can periodically dump the disk image onto a hard drive by selecting the appropriate option “Save the contents of RAMDISK in an image... etc.”
In principle, that's all. Check the box “Restart RAMDISK after clicking OK”, click “OK” and enjoy.
A virtual disk can also be used for its intended purpose (like a regular storage device - HDD), placing on it not only temporary and swap files, but also programs, user profiles, etc. There are publications with recommendations for using RAMDisk for storing temporary 1C files , one of Photoshop's "scratch disks", etc. Moreover, it is argued that productivity actually increases, although not significantly.
An interesting solution may be to use RAMDisk to improve system security, since data in RAM is destroyed when turned off. Naturally, in this case, the function of saving/recovering virtual disk images should be disabled.
Now a little about setting up Windows
It should be mentioned that the use of RAMDisk, depending on the tasks, may differ significantly, i.e. at the discretion of the user.
Eg:
To change system operating parameters using standard procedures:
Let's set the size and transfer the swap file to RAMDisk.
We will perform a similar procedure regarding the placement of “Temporary Internet files”
Speeding up Firefox.
Open the "Start" menu and click "Run...".
In the window that appears, type %appdata%\\Mozilla\\Firefox\\Profiles and press “Enter”. A window will open in which you will see a directory named “abracadabra.default”. This is your Firefox profile folder.
Open the "Start" menu and click "Run..."
In the window that appears, type %appdata%\\Mozilla\\Firefox\\profiles.ini and press “Enter”.
Notepad will open with the “profiles.ini” file loaded. Replace "Profiles/" in the "Path" variable with "Z:\\", where Z is the letter of your ramdisk.
Make sure the "IsRelative" value is zero.
StartWithLastProfile=1
Path=Z:\\ abracadabra.default
Launch firefox and enter about:config in the browser's address bar. We agree that we will be careful and end up on the firefoxa configuration page.
Right-click anywhere, select New -> String and set browser.cache.disk.parent_directory as the parameter name, and the path to the folder where the cache will be stored as the value. Z:\\ abracadabra.default
A few more settings:
// Cache and memory
user_pref(\”browser.cache.memory.enable\”, false); // memory cache loses its meaning
user_pref(\”browser.cache.offline.enable\”, false); // why is this needed at all?
user_pref(\”browser.turbo.enabled\”, false); // for those who have it enabled, disable it. The parameter loads the Fox part into memory for quick startup. Now we have everything quickly and in memory
user_pref(\”config.trim_on_minimize\”, false); // also not necessary. The parameter resets Fox from memory to swap. It still doesn't work on Vista and 7
Close Firefox.
Copy the “abracadabra.default” folder to the ramdisk. If there are requests to replace files, answer in the affirmative.
Restart Firefox.
We also change the paths of the system variables %TMP% and %TEMP%
Control Panel (this is for windows 7), system and security, viewing the name of this computer, additional system settings, environment variables.
Change the system variables %TMP% and %TEMP% to the letter of your RAMDISKa Z:\\Temp:
The problem is that many programs, for example, WinRAR or installers, will unpack temporary files in R:\\TMP, and if this file has more than free space, then the unpacking will not complete, and the archive will not be unpacked.
Is it worth it?
For me - yes. The health of the hard drive and browsing speed are very important to me.
There are inconveniences, but they are minor (saving the state before rebooting, restoring it when you turn it on - of course - not for a novice user), and you have to periodically clear the cache (but this can be avoided by taking up more memory for the RAMDisk or by writing a script that will clear the cache itself).
That's all for now, if anyone has any additions, write, we will add them.
The article is taken from open sources. Original article: //whitebrotherhood.ru/whitebrotherhood/node/15
On Alex Axler's website, an interesting battle. One of the commentators wrote that he created a RAM Disk in the memory of a Windows computer and transferred “environment variables, the page file and the browser cache” to it. When another asked him why there was a swap file in the RAM disk, which is used (usually) in cases where Windows and applications do not have enough RAM, the third commentator pointed out that some programs require its unconditional presence, and noted that A RAM disk speeds things up a lot. Then the hacking started and the topic became tough. It will be interesting to remember one more thing: some commentators noted a logical point - a RAM disk allows you to save the infinite resource of an SSD. There is a certain reason for this.
But what about the page file? And this is interesting. Exists Windows swap file, and transferring it to a RAM disk is somewhat illogical, here the critics are right. In order not to explain for a long time, I’ll say it in charade: “winrar.rar”. Think about it and you will understand why the idea of such a design is absurd. But, there is not only the Windows swap file, but also swaps of individual applications, and here... the absurd idea of transferring the swap file to a RAM disk begins to become more logical and logical. In general, it is not entirely correct to call these resources swap files - rather, they are some kind of temporary files. The peculiarity of Photoshop and LR, for example, is that they are created in any case - whether you like it or not. And the commentator on the Exler forum was right, he just called it incorrectly, which is why he received harsh, ironic criticism.
I’ll move a little away from the topic of swapping and tell you what a RAM disk is. I actively tinkered with them back in DOS times, and then it was possible to get good acceleration for some programs using ramdrive.sys. Then the topic somehow faded into the background; there was no time for ramdisks. But the concept has not changed today - RAM is orders of magnitude faster than disk memory. Even the fastest SSDs (such as OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2, with their read speeds of up to 1500 megabytes per second) cannot compete with the RAM disk located in the main RAM of the computer. What can we say about HDD - a modern 3-terabyte hard drive, for example, transfers data at speeds of up to 158 megabytes per second at the edge of the platter, and only up to 80 MB in its center (be curious - in our review of 3-terabyte HDDs there are specific numbers ). For comparison, when testing the RAM disk with Crystal Disk Mark, I got the following numbers:
Writing 8 gigabytes (!) per second, reading - five. And this is also measured at DDR3 with a frequency of 1333 MHz, and if you return the settings to the standard 1600, I’m sure the numbers will be even higher. Obviously, the speed of the RAM disk is enormous, and the timings are minimal compared to anything else. Minuses? Very serious. If the computer freezes or turns off unexpectedly, everything written on the RAM disk will not be saved. After restarting Windows, the drive will be clean. You cannot store any work on it - it is unsafe. Actually, that’s why a RAM disk is needed only for storing temporary files and something that you don’t mind erasing, but which will speed up significantly when transferred to a fast drive. Such as temporary files, folders with operational cache, etc. Well, you can put the “swap file” there ;-) (see the beginning)
So, I didn’t think much about it, but for some reason a lot of unrelated acquaintances started talking about RAM disks. Today we sat with podakuni , for example, at the Photoproject school in the evening, they tested a funny new Iomega hard drive (a model especially for Mac) on his MacBook, and he also said that he uses a RAM disk, and on a Mac, and that he transferred temporary Photoshop and Lightroom files there. According to him, this greatly speeds up programs. Well, I couldn’t stand it anymore - I came home, found the software and downloaded it. And at the same time I checked something. So far only preliminary, because a more detailed study will take time. The first impression is that yes, a RAM disk in Windows is needed if you work with Photoshop and LR. Moreover, both speed up noticeably on a computer that one wouldn’t dare call weak. Someone manages to get acceleration for other programs, but I’ll ignore this topic for now. And now the nuances.
By default, Lightroom keeps a gigabyte cache of pre-rendered files (its capacity can be varied), and Photoshop creates a TMP file on the specified drive. And turn off disk usage in such a role indeed it is forbidden. But they can actually be transferred to a RAM disk.
The screenshot shows a good example - after opening 14 pictures in Photoshop (and closing them), a 2 GB temporary file was created. Let me emphasize once again - the Windows swap file is on my computer completely turned off and the system has 32 (thirty-two) gigabytes of RAM. As you can see, this does not prevent Photoshop from creating temporary files, and if you have a laptop, for example, with a slow HDD that writes at a speed of only 100 megabytes per second, then it needs 20 seconds to create such a file. And he will waste time, no matter how much RAM you feed him. And even a fast SSD will need to spend some resources on this file. As practice has shown, access to this file occurs quite actively during Photoshop operation, both when using plug-ins, and during operations with files, and during serial processing. With Lightroom, the situation is somewhat similar - when you view photos, its built-in Camera RAW engine creates a preview, which it puts in a special folder. You can see where this folder is located in the settings. The files there are small - 500 kilobytes each, but in the process of processing the wedding photography there will be a gigabyte of them, and LR will access them. Thus, there really is a lot of meaning in transference. And considering that these files are “temporary”, there is no need to regret that they will be erased if the computer suddenly freezes or turns off.
Which RAM disk to choose? As an experiment, I installed Qsoft RAMDisk Enterprise under Windows 7 x64 Ultimate. Russian version of this driver free, and some reviews indicate that this is the best (and most productive) ramdisk for Windows. I can’t refute or confirm, I’ll just say that it started up under my OS, it works and doesn’t ask for money, and that’s already good. I note that the functions include such a thing as resetting and loading the contents of the RAM disk at startup and exit. It is understood that before turning off the PC, the contents are “hibernated” to the main media, and when Windows starts, they are loaded from there into the RAM disk. This allows you to keep the content of such a disk up-to-date and at least somehow combat the volatility of this type of “drive”.
I decided that I would experiment. Does anyone already have experience? It would be great to hear what you think.
One of the previous articles discussed the feasibility of creating a virtual disk in RAM. Now it's time to figure out what programs to create RAMDisk better to choose. Three tools were selected from the entire variety of software:
- qSoft RAMDisk Enterprise
- Dataram RAMDisk
- SoftPerfect RAM Disk
During the testing process, the speed characteristics of the created disks will be examined using the ATTO and CrystalDiskMark benchmarks. Additionally, applications will run in both 32-bit and 64-bit environments. This will allow you to find out which of the proposed RAM disks are best adapted for the 64-bit environment, because in the future it will be necessary.
Dataram RAMDisk
There are not many settings in the program, but you can download and save the image to disk at startup or shutdown. The maximum disk size is 3240 MB. The program allows you to create only one virtual disk partition.
SoftPerfect RAM Disk
The program allows you to install several RAMdisks. The program does its job well, all the necessary settings are available. However, the program is paid and will work without restrictions for only 30 days. Then it will refuse to start and demand money.
qSoft RAMDisk Enterprise
Finally, let’s look at the version from qSoft. This program is the most functional of all offered. Versions for 32- and 64-bit systems are available separately. The number of settings is quite large. By default, everything is configured as needed - you just need to specify the desired size of the virtual disk. In addition, you can set a dynamic partition size, which will increase automatically if there is not enough space on it.
Test stand
Motherboard – Asus M4A88T-V Evo
Processor – AMD Athlon II 635
Memory – Samsung DDR3 PC3-10600
The remaining components of the computer do not play a special role. The system operated at standard frequencies and did not overclock. Before the test, the BIOS settings were reset to factory settings.
RAMDisk 32-bit.
Let's start comparing the performance of all three programs in 32-bit mode. The operating system is the time-tested Windows XP. Disks with a size of approximately 250-300 MB were created, after which their speed was measured. For this purpose, we used benchmarks used for testing hard drives (after all, RAMDisk in this case acts as a regular hard drive). ATTO and CrystalDiskMark were selected from the tests. The HD Tune test, which communicates directly with devices (hard drives and SSDs) and not with the partitions on them, was not suitable for this experiment. Therefore, the HD Tune program simply did not detect two of the three discs. All disks were formatted in the FAT32 file system with a standard cluster size.
So, the test results (clickable).
The ATTO benchmark, which reports on the performance of devices on different cluster sizes, showed an unusual picture. The speed first grew with increasing cluster size (which is natural for ordinary media), and then, reaching a peak at 128 and 256 KB, it began to fall (which is already quite strange). Moreover, this peak actually corresponds to the maximum speed of the RAM disk. This is confirmed by other tests. It is likely that the algorithms used by the program are optimized for conventional hard drives and SSDs and begin to work not quite correctly at ultra-high speeds typical of RAM.
RAMDisk Enterprise from qSoft took the lead. It outperformed SoftPerfect by 5% and Dataram by 10%. Moreover, the main gap occurs in areas with a small cluster size, which is typical for real operations, for example, when loading the operating system or launching applications.
The second test, CrystalDiskMark, also showed interesting results (clickable).
Here the first place is again for RAMDisk Enterprise. In linear read and write operations, it outperformed its competitors by about the same margin as in the previous test. But at a small block size the gap increased many times over. Here RAMDisk Enterprise has no competition; performance on 4 KB blocks dropped only three times. In contrast, Dataram Ramdisk showed an almost tenfold drop in performance compared to linear parameters. SoftPerfect showed an intermediate result.
RAMDisk 64-bit
Now let's move on to testing in a 64-bit environment, which is Windows 7 64-bit. During the experiment, it will be clearly visible how well the programs are adapted to the new operating system. It should be noted that while Dataram Ramdisk and SoftPerfect have a single distribution for both versions of the operating system, qSoft RAMDisk Enterprise is supplied separately for 32- and 64-bit systems. Let's see if this gives any advantage.
And again the qSoft product is ahead. Moreover, on a 64-bit system its gap from its analogues has only grown. By the way, RAMDisk Enterprise is the only program among those presented, which in the 64-bit version showed an almost complete absence of dips or combs (the only graph in which the increase in speeds looks approximately as it should).
Which is better - 64-bit vs 32-bit
Now let's compare the performance of the leader of our today's test on platforms of different bit sizes.
As you can see, the speed when switching to a 64-bit system increases by about one and a half times. Other programs also showed an increase, but it was not as significant. Thus, we can safely say that RAMDisk Enterprise is the best adapted for new systems.
In conclusion, I note that the programs were also tested on an overclocked computer. Just overclocking the RAM with decreasing timings and increasing frequencies can increase the performance of a Ram disk by about 5-10%. Overclocking the processor also gives some gain, which, combined with overclocking the RAM, can give a gain of about 15%.
Personally, I'm not a fan of overclocking. In addition, a 15% increase in the virtual disk will have a slight impact on the overall speed of the system, which does not access it very often.
Eventually, RAMDisk Enterprise is not only the fastest Ram disk of the three programs, but also the most flexible, functional and reliable tool. In my experiments with such disks, I recommend using this particular program.
