Virtual Drive
 

I need a RAM drive. (not a SSD)
i.e. a drive that uses a portion of the PC memory space.
I need it for temporary fast calculations. My app uses a HDD but the
letter is assignable.
So it will go poof when I turn it off or shut down the PC.
Anybody know a good one?



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Virtual Drive
 

OldGuy wrote:
I need a RAM drive. (not a SSD)
i.e. a drive that uses a portion of the PC memory space.
I need it for temporary fast calculations. My app uses a HDD but the
letter is assignable.
So it will go poof when I turn it off or shut down the PC.
Anybody know a good one?


Near the bottom of the page, is "RAMDisk Lite", using up
to 4Gb of RAM.

http://memory.dataram.com/products-a...ftware/ramdisk

The paid version, allows up to the limits of PAE. On some
older systems, this was 64GB. It's unclear if an AMD
system, you could use more than 64GB, as AMD has more
address bits supported under PAE.

*******

Actually, the RAMDisk has two modes of operation.

It can use a limited amount of memory, from the
memory area below 4GB. The call used, uses "AWE".

If instead, you enable the PAE option, it uses memory
above 4GB. On my WinXP 32 bit machine, I have 8GB of
RAM installed, and only the 4GB near the bottom is
recognized by the OS. But the RAMDisk, running from
"driver-land", is not restricted by the system memory
license. And it can access all of the memory. With the
free version of the RAMDisk, you can use memory above
that which the OS sees. And that way, I can have a 4GB
PAE RAMDisk, at the same time as keeping the other
4GB for the OS area.

The two modes do not mix. You select one mode or
the other. In my case, the PAE option makes
the most available.

As for speed, the speed is deceiving. If you use
HDTune, it'll report around 4GB/sec. Yet, if you
write thousands of 4KB files, you won't get near that
benchmark rate. It seems the file system has limits
as to how many transactions it will handle per second.
The file system saturates, before the RAMDisk does.

Paul

Virtual Drive
 

on 11/13/2013, Paul supposed :
OldGuy wrote:
I need a RAM drive. (not a SSD)
i.e. a drive that uses a portion of the PC memory space.
I need it for temporary fast calculations. My app uses a HDD but the
letter is assignable.
So it will go poof when I turn it off or shut down the PC.
Anybody know a good one?


Near the bottom of the page, is "RAMDisk Lite", using up
to 4Gb of RAM.

http://memory.dataram.com/products-a...ftware/ramdisk

The paid version, allows up to the limits of PAE. On some
older systems, this was 64GB. It's unclear if an AMD
system, you could use more than 64GB, as AMD has more
address bits supported under PAE.

*******

Actually, the RAMDisk has two modes of operation.

It can use a limited amount of memory, from the
memory area below 4GB. The call used, uses "AWE".

If instead, you enable the PAE option, it uses memory
above 4GB. On my WinXP 32 bit machine, I have 8GB of
RAM installed, and only the 4GB near the bottom is
recognized by the OS. But the RAMDisk, running from
"driver-land", is not restricted by the system memory
license. And it can access all of the memory. With the
free version of the RAMDisk, you can use memory above
that which the OS sees. And that way, I can have a 4GB
PAE RAMDisk, at the same time as keeping the other
4GB for the OS area.

The two modes do not mix. You select one mode or
the other. In my case, the PAE option makes
the most available.

As for speed, the speed is deceiving. If you use
HDTune, it'll report around 4GB/sec. Yet, if you
write thousands of 4KB files, you won't get near that
benchmark rate. It seems the file system has limits
as to how many transactions it will handle per second.
The file system saturates, before the RAMDisk does.

Paul

Thanks! I will give it a try.
My immediate need is for a very small amount of RAM Disk. 4G will
satisfy all for now. If this plays out, I will buy the paid personal
version although I probably will never need all that as a RAM drive.



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Virtual Drive
 

Paul has brought this to us :
OldGuy wrote:
I need a RAM drive. (not a SSD)
i.e. a drive that uses a portion of the PC memory space.
I need it for temporary fast calculations. My app uses a HDD but the
letter is assignable.
So it will go poof when I turn it off or shut down the PC.
Anybody know a good one?


Near the bottom of the page, is "RAMDisk Lite", using up
to 4Gb of RAM.

http://memory.dataram.com/products-a...ftware/ramdisk

The paid version, allows up to the limits of PAE. On some
older systems, this was 64GB. It's unclear if an AMD
system, you could use more than 64GB, as AMD has more
address bits supported under PAE.

*******

Actually, the RAMDisk has two modes of operation.

It can use a limited amount of memory, from the
memory area below 4GB. The call used, uses "AWE".

If instead, you enable the PAE option, it uses memory
above 4GB. On my WinXP 32 bit machine, I have 8GB of
RAM installed, and only the 4GB near the bottom is
recognized by the OS. But the RAMDisk, running from
"driver-land", is not restricted by the system memory
license. And it can access all of the memory. With the
free version of the RAMDisk, you can use memory above
that which the OS sees. And that way, I can have a 4GB
PAE RAMDisk, at the same time as keeping the other
4GB for the OS area.

The two modes do not mix. You select one mode or
the other. In my case, the PAE option makes
the most available.

As for speed, the speed is deceiving. If you use
HDTune, it'll report around 4GB/sec. Yet, if you
write thousands of 4KB files, you won't get near that
benchmark rate. It seems the file system has limits
as to how many transactions it will handle per second.
The file system saturates, before the RAMDisk does.

Paul

Unfortunately it makes things a little difficult since the RAM Drive
created by that software does not report back to windows as a RAM Drive
but instead as a Fixed drive.

I can use but it makes life a little more difficult.



--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ---

Virtual Drive
 

OldGuy wrote:
Paul has brought this to us :
OldGuy wrote:
I need a RAM drive. (not a SSD)
i.e. a drive that uses a portion of the PC memory space.
I need it for temporary fast calculations. My app uses a HDD but the
letter is assignable.
So it will go poof when I turn it off or shut down the PC.
Anybody know a good one?


Near the bottom of the page, is "RAMDisk Lite", using up
to 4Gb of RAM.

http://memory.dataram.com/products-a...ftware/ramdisk

The paid version, allows up to the limits of PAE. On some
older systems, this was 64GB. It's unclear if an AMD
system, you could use more than 64GB, as AMD has more
address bits supported under PAE.

*******

Actually, the RAMDisk has two modes of operation.

It can use a limited amount of memory, from the
memory area below 4GB. The call used, uses "AWE".

If instead, you enable the PAE option, it uses memory
above 4GB. On my WinXP 32 bit machine, I have 8GB of
RAM installed, and only the 4GB near the bottom is
recognized by the OS. But the RAMDisk, running from
"driver-land", is not restricted by the system memory
license. And it can access all of the memory. With the
free version of the RAMDisk, you can use memory above
that which the OS sees. And that way, I can have a 4GB
PAE RAMDisk, at the same time as keeping the other
4GB for the OS area.

The two modes do not mix. You select one mode or
the other. In my case, the PAE option makes
the most available.

As for speed, the speed is deceiving. If you use
HDTune, it'll report around 4GB/sec. Yet, if you
write thousands of 4KB files, you won't get near that
benchmark rate. It seems the file system has limits
as to how many transactions it will handle per second.
The file system saturates, before the RAMDisk does.

Paul

Unfortunately it makes things a little difficult since the RAM Drive
created by that software does not report back to windows as a RAM Drive
but instead as a Fixed drive.

I can use but it makes life a little more difficult.


If you go looking for software based on the old
Microsoft sample code, then the downside of that
is usually the disk so created, is a lot smaller.

Before the one you tested came along, I was using
AR RAM Disk V1.20 occasionally. But the web site
no longer acknowledges this page. And archive.org
doesn't have a copy of the download. I was using
this on Win2K. It would probably work on WinXP,
but I don't know about later OSes. That could be
why they removed it.

http://arsoft-online.de/index.php?op...il einfo&id=3

ramdisk.zip
95,057 bytes
md5sum = f9fd7d086ce3588bc066cf733d8ff3b2

That one is a bit twitchy to get working.

HTH,
Paul

Virtual Drive
 

OldGuy wrote:
Paul has brought this to us :
OldGuy wrote:
I need a RAM drive. (not a SSD)
i.e. a drive that uses a portion of the PC memory space.
I need it for temporary fast calculations. My app uses a HDD but the
letter is assignable.
So it will go poof when I turn it off or shut down the PC.
Anybody know a good one?


Near the bottom of the page, is "RAMDisk Lite", using up
to 4Gb of RAM.

http://memory.dataram.com/products-a...ftware/ramdisk

The paid version, allows up to the limits of PAE. On some
older systems, this was 64GB. It's unclear if an AMD
system, you could use more than 64GB, as AMD has more
address bits supported under PAE.

*******

Actually, the RAMDisk has two modes of operation.

It can use a limited amount of memory, from the
memory area below 4GB. The call used, uses "AWE".

If instead, you enable the PAE option, it uses memory
above 4GB. On my WinXP 32 bit machine, I have 8GB of
RAM installed, and only the 4GB near the bottom is
recognized by the OS. But the RAMDisk, running from
"driver-land", is not restricted by the system memory
license. And it can access all of the memory. With the
free version of the RAMDisk, you can use memory above
that which the OS sees. And that way, I can have a 4GB
PAE RAMDisk, at the same time as keeping the other
4GB for the OS area.

The two modes do not mix. You select one mode or
the other. In my case, the PAE option makes
the most available.

As for speed, the speed is deceiving. If you use
HDTune, it'll report around 4GB/sec. Yet, if you
write thousands of 4KB files, you won't get near that
benchmark rate. It seems the file system has limits
as to how many transactions it will handle per second.
The file system saturates, before the RAMDisk does.

Paul

Unfortunately it makes things a little difficult since the RAM Drive
created by that software does not report back to windows as a RAM Drive but
instead as a Fixed drive.

I can use but it makes life a little more difficult.


If you go looking for software based on the old
Microsoft sample code, then the downside of that
is usually the disk so created, is a lot smaller.

Before the one you tested came along, I was using
AR RAM Disk V1.20 occasionally. But the web site
no longer acknowledges this page. And archive.org
doesn't have a copy of the download. I was using
this on Win2K. It would probably work on WinXP,
but I don't know about later OSes. That could be
why they removed it.

http://arsoft-online.de/index.php?op...il einfo&id=3

ramdisk.zip
95,057 bytes
md5sum = f9fd7d086ce3588bc066cf733d8ff3b2

That one is a bit twitchy to get working.

HTH,
Paul

To clarify, I wrote a small piece of code that uses a windows API to
get the drive type. This API reports correctly on all types of drives
except in the case of the aformentioned RAMDisk it reports it as fixed.
I have successfully used this RAMDisk and it works well.
I really do not need, right now anyay, much more than 500MB of RAMDisk.
Thank you for your help!



--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ---

Virtual Drive
 

In message , OldGuy
writes:
Paul has brought this to us :
[]
Near the bottom of the page, is "RAMDisk Lite", using up
to 4Gb of RAM.

http://memory.dataram.com/products-a...ftware/ramdisk
[]
Unfortunately it makes things a little difficult since the RAM Drive
created by that software does not report back to windows as a RAM Drive
but instead as a Fixed drive.

I can use but it makes life a little more difficult.
[]
Just being nosey, but why is that a problem - what difference (other
than that it goes when you switch off, obviously) is there between (how
Windows uses) a RAM drive and a "Fixed" drive?
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent upon it, can
still ripen a bunch of grapes as it if had nothing else in the universe to do.
-Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (1564-1642)