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My old Macintosh had this extremely cool feature called a RAM disc. It basically created a fake hard drive on your computer and loaded whatever was on it straight into and from your RAM. It made everything run much faster, but wasn't permanent storage for anything.
Are there any good programs out there that can create RAM Discs for Windows XP?
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It doesn't really work the same way, though. That seems to be something different where you use Hard Drive space for RAM.
I'm talking about the opposite, using RAM for Hard Drive space, loading things onto it and running them straight from the RAM.
That's the way they work. RAM is dynamic, meaning data is stored as needed, is refreshed to keep it there, then deleted as needed. When you load programs, a certain amount is loaded into RAM and is used by the HD/programs as needed.
That's what RAM is for as it's much faster than data accessed from the HD.
Or have I missed your question?
in that a swap file uses slower hard drive space to page RAM contents in and out of (virtual memory) while a Ram Disk uses fast RAM to simulate a hard drive allowing exceptionally fast performance.
Ram Disks were more "popular" in DOS and Win 3.X but they also have great uses in later versions because whatever is on them disappears upon shut down and cannot be reconstructed (although if whatever app makes use of the environment's temp directory portions of files worked on can be reconstructed from there).
A swap file has no drive letter but a ramdisk does get assigned a drive letter.
I was just trying to simplify it.
In DOS and W3.1, been there, done that, got the scars. Back when 64K of RAM was overkill and the 5 1/2 inch floppies were really floppy, and when Windows came on 13 floppies.
I offered two scenarios to him and I still don't understand what he's wanting.
Loading the application onto the RAM disk and running it from there provides a visible speed increase as opposed to running it from a slow hard drive.
Hint - use a RAM DISK for your browser's temp cache and see some real improvement in browsing.
How do I create a Ram Disc, then? It's not in any control panels that I have..
a couple of days ago in this post in this same thread:
http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-6122-0.html?forumID=44&threadID=160049&messageID=1779300
It is up to you to download the one you want to make use of.
this one being based on Microsoft's sample driver (KB Article Q257405) and free for the download:
(http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/w-p/system/devicedriverdevelopment/article.php/c5789/
If you go with that and have a problem with slow loading try the following -- Force FastFat driver to load unconditionally.
Open Regedit.exe:
Goto HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Fastfat
Change Start value from 4 to 1
Then too, there are many other RAMDRIVES available from many sources (some free some not and some with greater or lesser max sizes) such as:
http://www.ramdisk.tk/
http://www.logon-int.com/Product.asp?sClassId=PERFORM&sProdClassCode=EEC-P-0045
http://www.cenatek.com/product_ramdisk.cfm?Page=FAQ_NT
Some have found problems with restore points when using a ramdisk and if you experience this the ramdisk driver from the following link seems to solve the problem:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/AR_Soft_RAM_Disk_d1356.html
and several others can be located here:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=GGLC%2CGGLC%3A1969-53%2CGGLC%3Aen&q=%22KB+Article+Q257405%22&btnG=Search
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