Do empty RAMdisks increase boot/shutdown times?

[dstarr5d]

So, I'm in the process of building a new PC. Workstation/mild gaming rig. I'm a photographer, and when working with uncompressed, 16-bit image files in Photoshop, if I end up with enough layers, I could easily be working with PSD files that weigh 2 or 3 GB each. All those uncompressed pixels really add up. And since I'm in the good habit of saving often when working, I end up having to write so many gigs of information every few minutes. That adds quite a lot of time to my workflow, so I'd like to reduce that.

 

One solution is to temporarily move that photo I'm working on to my SSD and work on it there, but a RAMdisk sounds like an even better solution, I think, considering the write speeds are absolutely mind-blowing. I'll be running 24-32GB of RAM, so I'll have the space for it. And I know there's two caveats regarding RAMdisks:

 

1) RAMdisks are volatile, so I'll need a UPS to prevent data loss in the event of power drops.

2) RAMdisks increase boot and shutdown times.

 

As such, I have questions regarding both problems:

 

1) Is there are a way to actively mirror the contents of the RAMdisk as it changes? Ideally, when I save my file, it'll be saved to the RAMdisks almost instantly, and then as I continue working, that saved file is mirrored to an HDD. Sort of like RAID1 in a way. Is that doable?

2) My RAMdisk would be small, probably only 4GB. But not only that, it would be empty on shutdown and boot, because it'd only be used as temporary write space. I know that it's the saving and copying of disk images that adds to boot/shutdown times, but if that image is empty, does it still affect these times?

 

Thanks in advance!

[AlwaysFSX]

If I remember correctly, the reason why boot times increase with more storage is because the system scans the drives for necessary files (or just in general to make sure everything is there and work), since ram disks are so fast you wouldn't notice a problem. Also, ram disks are not volatile, that's why they're useful. You're specifying that those parts of the ram do NOT be dumped when the system shuts down, preserving the data on there.

[Sarcasm]

If I remember correctly, the reason why boot times increase with more storage is because the system scans the drives for necessary files (or just in general to make sure everything is there and work), since ram disks are so fast you wouldn't notice a problem. Also, ram disks are not volatile, that's why they're useful. 

What? They're most definitely volatile. As soon as power is cut, everything stored in RAM is gone. And the reason why RAMdisks take longer to start up and shut down is because it's dumping or loading everything inside it to or from the non-volatile storage you have. Now if it's simply used as an empty scratchdisk, it should be faster than loading an OS and games. Not sure about the last one though.

[Blake]

If I remember correctly, the reason why boot times increase with more storage is because the system scans the drives for necessary files (or just in general to make sure everything is there and work), since ram disks are so fast you wouldn't notice a problem. Also, ram disks are not volatile, that's why they're useful. You're specifying that those parts of the ram do NOT be dumped when the system shuts down, preserving the data on there.

Yeah sarcasm is correct, without power, RAM loses all data stored, hence it being volatile (however I will give you that if put the ram straight into liquid nitrogen you can store the information for a few minutes before it loses the data).

 

To OP's point there is nothing like that currently, closest thing is Apple's hybrid drives, which do the what your after, but with an SSD and HDD, not RAM/HDD.

 

If your just using as a scratch disk, then just disable your pagefile/swapfile, then it doesn't matter.

[ForsakenLive]

When you boot, the ramdisk will start, It will load the data stored into it from your HDD/SSD. Depending on how much data it will take longer or not.

For a super-fast scratch disk, Ramdisk seems to be very useful, well, that's what it's made for.

 

I Suggest you watch this 3 videos that will help you comprehend ramdisks.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIaz5WktAGg   (AMD Radeon RAM Disk Featuring 64GB G.Skill RipjawsZ Linus Tech Tips)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cqfhZvyE80     (ASUS X79 - RAM Cache / RAM Disk with JJ)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9IZQb5bNIo    (AMD Radeon RAMDisk Interview & Overview - Newegg TV)