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could you hypothetically install your OS into your RAM?

RobertHowie

So I was thinking of upgrading my system again and was looking for bottlenecks, and it occurred to me that the main bottleneck for my system is probably the storage. Obviously I'm just going to get a new SSD, but I got thinking about systems with 128gb+ of ram, since the computer doesn't need even half of that, could you install your OS directly into the ram? This is just speculation, since no one wants their OS and key programs wiped every time you restart your pc, but is it possible in theory?

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Probably would be able to, with some serious hacking, and some hardware and software tweaking etc, but ofcourse soon as the system loses power, the RAM gets ripped clean.

 

Theoretically I don't see much stopping it, I mean, Intel is even mucking about with putting non-volatile memory on the memory bus.

 

We can already boot from devices on the Sata bus and pci-e bus, and don't see much stopping us from booting from something on the memory bus.

 

But to the average Joe, it's not like something you can just look at a guide for and do it.

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No, RAM is volatile memory. Although hypothetically possible, to be able to save your OS on RAM modules you will be literally leaping over countless hurdles. There is a reason why ROM was invented.

 

Yes, it would be a lot easier and more practical to just get an SSD.

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Sort of, and No.

 

What you're thinking of is a ramdisk, the problem with that is RAM is volatile memory, meaning any time power isn't supplied to the component, everything stored in it is lost. Ramdisks work by preloading frequently used files into the excess ram, reducing the access time for each time the file is accessed. The problem is that each time the system is powered on, those files do need to be loaded into ram from a non-volatile storage device (usually a hard drive or SSD)

 

TL:DR yes it is possible, but the initial load time means it usually isn't worth it unless you're got a multi-redundant system with zero downtime.

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VMWare+Ramdisk, possible i guess.

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I don't think it would work because they work differently.

 

No, as windows setup requires restarting during installation, some OS' May be able to, but not consumer ones.

 

Probably would be able to, with some serious hacking, and some hardware and software tweaking etc, but ofcourse soon as the system loses power, the RAM gets ripped clean.

 

Theoretically I don't see much stopping it, I mean, Intel is even mucking about with putting non-volatile memory on the memory bus.

 

We can already boot from devices on the Sata bus and pci-e bus, and don't see much stopping us from booting from something on the memory bus.

 

No, RAM is volatile memory. Although hypothetically possible, to be able to save your OS on RAM modules you will be literally leaping over countless hurdles. There is a reason why ROM was invented.

 

Yes, it would be a lot easier and more practical to just get an SSD.

Your all wrong.

 

 

With the right drivers, yes, but you're better off going with NVME drives anyway.

Your misinformed.

 

 

 

Sort of, and No.

 

What you're thinking of is a ramdisk, the problem with that is RAM is volatile memory, meaning any time power isn't supplied to the component, everything stored in it is lost. Ramdisks work by preloading frequently used files into the excess ram, reducing the access time for each time the file is accessed. The problem is that each time the system is powered on, those files do need to be loaded into ram from a non-volatile storage device (usually a hard drive or SSD)

 

TL:DR yes it is possible, but the initial load time means it usually isn't worth it unless you're got a multi-redundant system with zero downtime.

GOD DAMN BROTHER preach that about our lord and savior ramdisk.

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Your all wrong.

 

Your misinformed.

 

GOD DAMN BROTHER preach that about our lord and savior ramdisk.

We basically all said it was too much of a bother... no wonder we're "all wrong".

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Yes, but you would have to have it so that the RAM is always powered somehow

"My game vs my brains, who gets more fatal errors?" ~ Camper125Lv, GMC Jam #15

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I believe they're working on SSDs which plug into RAM slots on your board.

As for your question, I suppose you could use something like unraid to create a RAM drive then install the OS through that.

Yeah it's possible in theory but in practice it's to much hassle.

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I believe they're working on SSDs which plug into RAM slots on your board.

 

Yep, Sandisk. http://techreport.com/news/25951/sandisk-ulltradimm-is-an-ssd-on-a-memory-stick

 

As for actually doing ram disk for OS, yea its possible but why? Even a cheapo SSD exceeds what most applications are programmed for, raw speed only goes so far for things optimized for extremely slow HDDs (in comparison).

 

You would have to do it with a VM stored on the ram disk then create startup and shutdown scripts to copy the changed state to permanent storage, or using a linked clone/differencing virtual disk where the changed data is stored in the ram disk and the original on disk. 

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You can sort of do this today with a base machine with a software RAMDisk and VirtualBox. You make a nice large RAMDisk and then in VirtualBox as you are setting up the virtual machine you set that ramdisk as the place to store the files for the drive and there you go you have a hard drive using RAM, so its not theoretically possible its actually possible today to do it in certain circumstances.

 

But because RAM gets discard within about 60 milliseconds if its not refreshed and will be empty on reboots it'll only work until the primary computer is rebooted. You can't currently do this without a virtual machine wrapper because the operating system needs a reboot and the UEFI always clears out the RAM. Ultimately Intel's Xpoint is intended to fix this by being some where inbetween RAM and SSD in size and performance but be nonvolatile, we might finally be able to have the running state of our computer be effectively instantly restored.

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Your all wrong.

 

 

Your misinformed.

 

 

 

GOD DAMN BROTHER preach that about our lord and savior ramdisk.

Why am I misinformed? 

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No, RAM is volatile memory. Although hypothetically possible, to be able to save your OS on RAM modules you will be literally leaping over countless hurdles. There is a reason why ROM was invented.

 

Yes, it would be a lot easier and more practical to just get an SSD.

1) RAM is USUALLY volatile STORAGE

2) NVRAM is non volatile.

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Nvme has no where near the bandwidth memory does.

Wasn't talking about similar specifications, more about performance.

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I've heard about using RAMdisk or a similar program to cache some files with your RAM, so it would probably be possible to somehow load the windows files onto your ram from another harddrive when you switch on the PC and then save the files to the drive again, but considering you would probably be doing that to speed up the boot times and the boot times would be as fast as your read speed is on the harddrive SSD that you are loading from, as someone already said, it would maybe be faster using a NVME SSD or SSD RAID 0 array, not because NVME SSDs are faster, because they are not, but because it would be a giant hassle to set it up and your boot times wouldn't be much faster.

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Search up RAM drive

Thats that. If you need to get in touch chances are you can find someone that knows me that can get in touch.

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Ramdisk would perform 10 times better.

Theoretically, yes.

But performance isn't the only thing to take into consideration tho.

Convenience, price/performance and liability for example.

 

I think the upcoming dimm slot storage will eventually get mainstream, or a similar variant atleast.

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if you have a virtual machine you could make the VMs boot drive be a ramdisk

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