RAMDisk partition memory allocation?

[NDRE28]

Hello! 

My PC has 32GB DDR4. 

I created an 8GB RAMDisk partition using ImDisk program. 

I use this partition for temporary files. 

 

Question: 

By having this partition, am I left constantly with only 24GB RAM for system usage?

[Electronics Wizardy]

depends on how the program is setup, some will only use what they need, look at the ram usage of the program.

[mariushm]

I think ImDisk will use the ram as needed, it doesn't reserve the 8 GB from the start.

 

You could just open Task Manager and see what's happening.

[NDRE28]

15 hours ago, mariushm said:

I think ImDisk will use the ram as needed, it doesn't reserve the 8 GB from the start.

 

You could just open Task Manager and see what's happening.

After restart, I opened Task Manager and these are the infos: 

In use = 10.2GB (0 MB)

Available = 21.7GB

[Haro]

1 hour ago, NDRE said:

After restart, I opened Task Manager and these are the infos: 

In use = 10.2GB (0 MB)

Available = 21.7GB

Usually the system as a whole uses around 3-4 gigs of RAM and since you partitioned it and took 8 gigs you'll be using around 10-13ish 14 so that is normal 

[NDRE28]

2 hours ago, TofuHaroto said:

Usually the system as a whole uses around 3-4 gigs of RAM and since you partitioned it and took 8 gigs you'll be using around 10-13ish 14 so that is normal 

Yeah. 

So with other words, making a RAMDisk partition leads to having less memory available for system usage. 

I thought it will take that amount only when the RAMDisk partition will be full. 

[Haro]

27 minutes ago, NDRE said:

Yeah. 

So with other words, making a RAMDisk partition leads to having less memory available for system usage. 

I thought it will take that amount only when the RAMDisk partition will be full. 

Apparently yea I thought it only used the amount when needed but I guess not 

Well we learned something today lol

[mariushm]

1 hour ago, TofuHaroto said:

Apparently yea I thought it only used the amount when needed but I guess not 

Well we learned something today lol

You'd also have to test if that memory region is swappable ... because if it is, Windows can just dump it to pagefile if your page file is configured to be large enough

try to fill your ram and see what happens ... for example something basic and simple and fast ... Resize a 4k image to something like 10k x 10 k pixels and make a few copies (copy paste in a folder or hold  ctrl/shift while dragging in windows explorer) ... then load them in photoshop or gimp or something like that.

[NDRE28]

30 minutes ago, mariushm said:

You'd also have to test if that memory region is swappable ... because if it is, Windows can just dump it to pagefile if your page file is configured to be large enough

try to fill your ram and see what happens ... for example something basic and simple and fast ... Resize a 4k image to something like 10k x 10 k pixels and make a few copies (copy paste in a folder or hold  ctrl/shift while dragging in windows explorer) ... then load them in photoshop or gimp or something like that.

I’ve set my Paging File to “None”, meaning 0 MB (Linus’s advice), so it always uses the RAM. 

[mariushm]

3 minutes ago, NDRE said:

I’ve set my Paging File to “None”, meaning 0 MB (Linus’s advice), so it always uses the RAM. 

You should never do that. It's almost always better to have a page file even if set to something small like 256 MB .. 1 GB.

The amount of writes to page file are low and won't hurt your SSD.

[NDRE28]

11 hours ago, mariushm said:

You should never do that. It's almost always better to have a page file even if set to something small like 256 MB .. 1 GB.

The amount of writes to page file are low and won't hurt your SSD.

I know that your advice is theoretically the safest, but I’ll keep using the RAM solely because:

1. It’s faster; 

2. I’ll wear out my SSD less;

3. Linus keeps the same setting; 4. I never had errors or issues... so far

 

But thanks anyway.

[NDRE28]

On 4/24/2020 at 4:00 PM, TofuHaroto said:

Apparently yea I thought it only used the amount when needed but I guess not 

Well we learned something today lol

Hello! 

I’ve learned something new today about ImDisk program. 

It has an option to allocate memory dynamically. 

So with other words, after assigning a size for the RAMDisk partition (8GB for example), the PC won’t keep all of that memory amount unavailable for the system. The only amount unavailable for the system will be the amount of occupied space located on the RAMDisk partition. 

 

https://www.ghacks.net/2014/01/26/create-dynamic-ramdisk-imdisk-toolkit/