[Guide] Ramdisk

[Joonikko]

Ramdisk
The ramdisk guide.
 

What is a ramdsik?
Ramdisk uses system memory as mass storage. Since system memory is fast, doesn’t wear down over time like NAND flash, is a lot faster and clears when the computer reboots or shuts down.

Usecases

• temporary, fast storage device
• download drive
• cache drive

Benefits

• reduces the amount of file system fragmentation
• reduced wear-and-tear of the physical disk / SSD
• less junk on the hard drive / SSD
• less noise and heat from the hard drive

Be aware that the content of a RAM disk is permanently deleted as soon as it is ejected! Only use it as temporary storage!
 

 

Software

Windows

• ImDisk (free)
• SoftPerfect RAM Disk (free)
• Primo ramdisk / Vsuite Ramdisk (demo, paid)
• Dataram Ramdisk (demo, paid)
• AMD Radeon RAMDisk (same as Dataram RAMDisk /w AMD branding)
• AsRock XFast RAM (free)

I would highly recommend using ImDisk. It’s free, open-source, doesn’t have size limitations and supports saving the ramdisk as a file on the HDD if needed.
 
 

OS X

• iRamDisk (paid)
• RAMDiskCreator (free)
• Terminal (look below)
• TMPdisk

 
 
This will create a 250MB ramdisk, you can change the size by chaning the “512000” value. The size of the disk is based on the number of 512 byte sectors. That means the size in bytes has to be divided by 512. For example to calculate the size parameter of a volume with 4GB, the following formula is used:
 

You can also create a ramdisk with a terminal command, but I’ve been using iRamDisk since it can re-create the ramdisk on boot and use wired memory (can’t be written to HDD if the system runs out of memory, so no cache files will never be written my boot drive.
 
I did not include Linux in this post. Sorry about this, but I do not feel like telling somebody to do something that I haven’t done myself nor have any experience with.
 
 

 
My personal setup (OS X, hackintosh)
When booting, my computer creates a 256MB and ~500MB ramdisks, one for browser cache and one for temp files and browser downloads. The browser cache directory is symbolicly linked to the cache storage directory, which will "redirect" the files to the ramdisk, instead of saving it on the HDD.
 
 
Symbolic links for browser cache:
 
For Safari:

ln -s /Volumes/cachedisk ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari

 
For Chromium:

ln -s /Volumes/cachedisk ~/Library/Caches/Chromium

 
For Firefox:

ln -s /Volumes/cachedisk ~/Library/Caches/Firefox

 

 
Hopefully this was useful for some of you and any feedback is greatly appreciated.
 
 
 
Updates:
26-01-2014: added TMPdisk, which I'm currently using.
20-03-2014: Added Automator script for easy ramdisk creation on OS X.

[pewpewmerica]

Awesome thread

[Guest D1G1T4L1Z3R]

excellent

[technovore]

I belive linus did a video on this once, refering to it might be a good addition.
otherwise nice job!

[Joonikko]

I belive linus did a video on this once, refering to it might be a good addition.

otherwise nice job!

 

Linus only used the AMD Radeon Ramdisk, which isn't that great piece of a software, is paid and only allows a single ramdisk at once. He also demonstrated the ramdisk by installing software and games to it, which is a quite impractical usecase for it.

 

 

 

 

The video by Linus:

[Psittac]

ImDisk link is autoblocked by malwarebytes as a trojan