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  #1  
Old December 21st 19, 12:21 AM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Shadow
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,638
Default Ramdisk

On Fri, 20 Dec 2019 17:54:40 -0500, "Mayayana"
wrote:

I'm doing this on XP but that group seems to be rather quiet
these days.

Trying to set up ramdisk swap file on 32 bit. Have
16 GB RAM. Gavotte version didn't seem to work. ImDisk
worked fine. But there's a catch. Virtual memory settings
show that I set up 3 GB virtual memory on the ramdisk,
drive R, but there's now a pagefile.sys on C drive that's
taking up 3 GB. Settings show no swap file for C drive.


Have you tried measuring speed? CrystalDiskMark shows quite
impressive numbers for RAMDisks. If it's a faux RAMDisk, numbers will
be much lower.

What does this mean? Did it fail? Or is C:\pagefile.sys
just a quirk that can't be avoided when setting up a
ramdisk swap file?


I have the same problem. Can't use anything above the 4GB
limit.
Currently using the last free version of SoftPerfect RAM
Disk(v 3.4.8) for my browser profile folder. It's very fast, saves the
image at shutdown, pretty stable (1 crash in 6 months, but I keep
backups).
I don't use it for a swapfile because I rarely need more than
1GB swap on XP.
If you ever find something that works above the "limit",
please post.
[]'s

PS X-posted to the XP group. Just in case someone there has a
working setup.
--
Don't be evil - Google 2004
We have a new policy - Google 2012
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  #2  
Old December 21st 19, 02:00 AM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default Ramdisk

Shadow wrote:
On Fri, 20 Dec 2019 17:54:40 -0500, "Mayayana"
wrote:

I'm doing this on XP but that group seems to be rather quiet
these days.

Trying to set up ramdisk swap file on 32 bit. Have
16 GB RAM. Gavotte version didn't seem to work. ImDisk
worked fine. But there's a catch. Virtual memory settings
show that I set up 3 GB virtual memory on the ramdisk,
drive R, but there's now a pagefile.sys on C drive that's
taking up 3 GB. Settings show no swap file for C drive.


Have you tried measuring speed? CrystalDiskMark shows quite
impressive numbers for RAMDisks. If it's a faux RAMDisk, numbers will
be much lower.
What does this mean? Did it fail? Or is C:\pagefile.sys
just a quirk that can't be avoided when setting up a
ramdisk swap file?


I have the same problem. Can't use anything above the 4GB
limit.
Currently using the last free version of SoftPerfect RAM
Disk(v 3.4.8) for my browser profile folder. It's very fast, saves the
image at shutdown, pretty stable (1 crash in 6 months, but I keep
backups).
I don't use it for a swapfile because I rarely need more than
1GB swap on XP.
If you ever find something that works above the "limit",
please post.
[]'s

PS X-posted to the XP group. Just in case someone there has a
working setup.


Dataram RAMDisk Driver
V4.0.4.2
Dataram RAMDiskVE Driver
Dataram, Inc.

RAMDiskXP.sys 62,464 bytes

Dataram_RAMDisk_v4_0_5_RC0.msi 5,567,488 bytes
SHA1: 95F123AF724206B9C8DD61DD76BF388098FE9B54

AFAIK, 4GB max size, for free. Even if the file versions
don't match, it's still a fine addition to a WinXP system
that has too much RAM.

*******

I have a single reference to that file in my Sent folder.
It goes as follows.

Dataram_RAMDisk_v4_0_5_RC0.msi

5,567,488 bytes
MD5 = 1c9c709c647d979b1277f6d756dce265
SHA1 = 95f123af724206b9c8dd61dd76bf388098fe9b54

Try here.

http://filehippo.com/download_ramdisk/tech/14475/

[Actually, try here. Took me a while to find this! Immediate download...]
https://filehippo.com/download_ramdisk/14475

The one "RAMDisk 4.0.5 RC0 (Windows) http://ramdisk.en.uptodown.com"
is corrupted. Looks like RAID array damage, 256KB
chunks of zeros in the file. So don't use that, until
someone reports it and they fix it.

Always check the checksums. The SHA1 is safer, if one is
available. If I start using SHA256, there would be more
whining from people attempting to check. You can always upload
a file to virustotal and they can calculate a SHA256 for you,
but the upload on virustotal is "pure flaky pastry".

So what you do with that, is install it, use the Configuration
Utility, then go to the Advanced tab to see your "freebie"
license limit and how much RAM the machine has.

https://i.postimg.cc/W1ZbJKjV/Advanced-tab.gif

As far as I know, if you purchase a license, it applies
to specific versions. My purchased license is for a later
version that doesn't do PAE. Which is fine, because that
machine has a better setup anyway. The above version
is specifically to get "more than your moneys worth"
from WinXP :-)

HTH,
Paul
  #3  
Old December 21st 19, 03:45 AM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Mayayana
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 6,438
Default Ramdisk

"Paul" wrote

|
| http://filehippo.com/download_ramdisk/tech/14475/
|
| [Actually, try here. Took me a while to find this! Immediate
download...]
| https://filehippo.com/download_ramdisk/14475
|

Thanks. That seems to have worked. What a lot
of confusion! That's the first option I've found that
actually has instructions. ImDisk and Gavotte provided
no instructions at all. Dataram provides full instruction,
recognized the installed RAM, and specifically provided
an option to put the ramdisk above 4 GB.
Gavotte also didn't work but did bluescreen a couple of
times before I got it installed, only to see no ramdisk
and no explanation. ImDisk worked, showed a ramdisk,
but didn't know enough to put the swap file above 4 GB
in RAM.

I had to clear all swap and reboot in order to set
it up, but once I did that I was able to delete
C:\pagefil.sys.

It's funny how often the best programs are not
even on anyone's top ten list. Dataram seems to
say that they only allow 1 GB on the free version,
but I didn't find that. I had to go back to v. 3.5 to
get XP support *and* avoid the mess of installing
..Net 4. (And to skip the version you warned about.)
So maybe that's why there was no limit. It tried to
go lonline once during install, but aside from that
it now seems to be fine. I'll have to edit some giant
images and see how it works.


  #4  
Old December 21st 19, 03:59 AM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Mayayana
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 6,438
Default Ramdisk

-
"Shadow" wrote

| Have you tried measuring speed? CrystalDiskMark shows quite
| impressive numbers for RAMDisks. If it's a faux RAMDisk, numbers will
| be much lower.

See my post to Paul. I got it set up. Then I tried
Crystal, which I'd never seen before. I don't know
how to interpret it. The ramdisk had only 94 MB free
so I tested a run of 64 MB. The result was 10 times
higher than read/write to a normal partition. I don't
know what that means. Maybe I'd need to set up a
folder on the ramdisk that's not swap in order to test
it.


  #5  
Old December 21st 19, 06:12 AM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default Ramdisk

Mayayana wrote:
-
"Shadow" wrote

| Have you tried measuring speed? CrystalDiskMark shows quite
| impressive numbers for RAMDisks. If it's a faux RAMDisk, numbers will
| be much lower.

See my post to Paul. I got it set up. Then I tried
Crystal, which I'd never seen before. I don't know
how to interpret it. The ramdisk had only 94 MB free
so I tested a run of 64 MB. The result was 10 times
higher than read/write to a normal partition. I don't
know what that means. Maybe I'd need to set up a
folder on the ramdisk that's not swap in order to test
it.


You can use HDTune free version to test the
"whole surface" of your RAMDisk in read mode.
You don't need to test write mode particularly,
as there's no reason for read versus write to
vary. There's no "physical process" involved here.

My HDTune read is a flat line at around 4GB/sec, which
isn't really all that good of a result. The best
results I can get in the room, are around 7GB/sec.
And this is nowhere near what a Streams benchmark
should be reporting, especially on the other machine.

When you work out the bandwidth claimed based on
the memory numbers, the results on the RAMDisk won't
even be close. You get what you can from it.

I discovered one other anomaly, which is that performance
is more consistent on OSes like Windows 10, if you set
the Power schema to "High Performance" and jam the CPU
to the nominal clock. That'll help if your graph line isn't
flat, when HDTune testing. You'll get stairsteps
in the graph, if the machine is running the "Balanced"
schema. I reported a previous result for Windows 10,
where HDTune didn't seem to be returning the right
numbers on Windows 10, and perhaps this latest
discovery of the schema setting, might help with
that too.

Paul
  #6  
Old December 21st 19, 02:44 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Mayayana
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 6,438
Default Ramdisk

"Paul" wrote

| You can use HDTune free version to test the
| "whole surface" of your RAMDisk in read mode.
| You don't need to test write mode particularly,
| as there's no reason for read versus write to
| vary. There's no "physical process" involved here.
|
| My HDTune read is a flat line at around 4GB/sec, which
| isn't really all that good of a result. The best
| results I can get in the room, are around 7GB/sec.
| And this is nowhere near what a Streams benchmark
| should be reporting, especially on the other machine.
|
I suppose the real test is with RAM use. As it is,
things on my XP box are pretty much instant. I like
the idea of ramdisk to reduce writes to the SSDs.
I also see value for big operations. There's not really
any other reason it would matter.

Maybe I'll try to set up some tests, like applying
filters in Paint Shop Pro to gigantic images. If the
ramdisk is working as expected then it should be
able to do those operation nearly instantly, on
operations where my other XP box will show a progress
bar and take some number of seconds to complete
the operation.



  #7  
Old December 21st 19, 02:50 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Shadow
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,638
Default Ramdisk

On Fri, 20 Dec 2019 21:59:50 -0500, "Mayayana"
wrote:

-
"Shadow" wrote

| Have you tried measuring speed? CrystalDiskMark shows quite
| impressive numbers for RAMDisks. If it's a faux RAMDisk, numbers will
| be much lower.

See my post to Paul. I got it set up. Then I tried
Crystal, which I'd never seen before. I don't know
how to interpret it. The ramdisk had only 94 MB free
so I tested a run of 64 MB. The result was 10 times
higher than read/write to a normal partition. I don't
know what that means.


It means it's a real RAMDisk.


Maybe I'd need to set up a
folder on the ramdisk that's not swap in order to test
it.


Yes, just temporally move your swapfile to c:\ (or whatever),
reboot, and format the RAMDisk before you test it.
[]'s

--
Don't be evil - Google 2004
We have a new policy - Google 2012
  #8  
Old December 21st 19, 03:23 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Mayayana
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 6,438
Default Ramdisk

"Shadow" wrote

| See my post to Paul. I got it set up. Then I tried
| Crystal, which I'd never seen before. I don't know
| how to interpret it. The ramdisk had only 94 MB free
| so I tested a run of 64 MB. The result was 10 times
| higher than read/write to a normal partition. I don't
| know what that means.
|
| It means it's a real RAMDisk.
|

No, I mean it was 10 times higher number. It took
10 times as long.

| Yes, just temporally move your swapfile to c:\ (or whatever),
| reboot, and format the RAMDisk before you test it.

Formatting at boot to FAT-32 is part of the deal.

But I did try Paul's suggestion of HDTune. I'm
getting an average about 120 MB/sec with the SSD,
showing a line that looks like Donald Trump hooked
up to a lie detector. The ramdisk, as Paul noted, is
almost a straight line, at about 2300 MB/sec. It looks
like I'm in business. And it was all very simple, with
clear directions, to use the Dataram option. I'm glad
I asked here. I was wasting a lot of time doing
research online and reading chat groups where no
one seemed to quite know what they were talking
about.


  #9  
Old December 21st 19, 08:35 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Shadow
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,638
Default Ramdisk

On Sat, 21 Dec 2019 09:23:19 -0500, "Mayayana"
wrote:

"Shadow" wrote

| See my post to Paul. I got it set up. Then I tried
| Crystal, which I'd never seen before. I don't know
| how to interpret it. The ramdisk had only 94 MB free
| so I tested a run of 64 MB. The result was 10 times
| higher than read/write to a normal partition. I don't
| know what that means.
|
| It means it's a real RAMDisk.
|

No, I mean it was 10 times higher number. It took
10 times as long.


The result is in MB/s
Try an earlier version, the latest is not "guaranteed" to work
on XP.
Here's the"old" portable version:

http://c3sl.dl.osdn.jp/crystaldiskma...kMark6_0_2.zip

(that's the official mirror)


| Yes, just temporally move your swapfile to c:\ (or whatever),
| reboot, and format the RAMDisk before you test it.

Formatting at boot to FAT-32 is part of the deal.

But I did try Paul's suggestion of HDTune. I'm
getting an average about 120 MB/sec with the SSD,
showing a line that looks like Donald Trump hooked
up to a lie detector. The ramdisk, as Paul noted, is
almost a straight line, at about 2300 MB/sec. It looks
like I'm in business. And it was all very simple, with
clear directions, to use the Dataram option. I'm glad
I asked here. I was wasting a lot of time doing
research online and reading chat groups where no
one seemed to quite know what they were talking
about.


I just spent a couple of hours uninstalling my SoftPerfect
RAMDisk and installing Dataram_RAMDisk_v4_0_5_RC0.

Here's a test result:

https://postimg.cc/HcDC4L1H

Here's some notes I made:
1) Block DataRam from phoning home. It attempts to reach out to
memory.dataram.com and
license.dataram.com

No idea why it needs to check the license, I'm using the free
version, but the configuration window takes up to 4 minutes to appear
while it waits for a reply.
I unplug my cable whenever I install anything new.
So - firewall that.

2) Don't choose "Unformatted" in that first window, or Windows Disk
Manager won't see it. Choose "FAT32". Once it's up, you can format to
NTFS, and change the letter(I used "Z" so it doesn't interfere with my
pendrive-backup scheme).
DataRam will remember the drive letter and format(I save the
image, since I'm using it for my Palemoon profile).

3) I now have a lot more "total" RAM, so Dataram DOES use memory above
4GB, unlike the other offerings I tried.

4) I had tried Dataram previously, but it crashed a lot. Not the
version recommended by Paul though. So I'm going to keep track of the
TBC(time between crashes). Softperfect only corrupted the image file
once in 6 months, but required re-installing the driver and copying my
browser profile from a backup.

PS You can use OSFMount
https://www.osforensics.com/tools/mo...sk-images.html

For XP(not listed)
https://www.osforensics.com/download..._v1.5.1018.exe

to mount Dataram images. Choose "Partition type" not "whole file"
because of the offset.
HTH
[]'s
--
Don't be evil - Google 2004
We have a new policy - Google 2012
  #10  
Old December 21st 19, 08:50 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Shadow
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,638
Default Ramdisk

On Fri, 20 Dec 2019 20:00:10 -0500, Paul
wrote:

On Fri, 20 Dec 2019 17:54:40 -0500, "Mayayana"
wrote:

I'm doing this on XP but that group seems to be rather quiet
these days.

Trying to set up ramdisk swap file on 32 bit. Have
16 GB RAM. Gavotte version didn't seem to work. ImDisk
worked fine. But there's a catch. Virtual memory settings
show that I set up 3 GB virtual memory on the ramdisk,
drive R, but there's now a pagefile.sys on C drive that's
taking up 3 GB. Settings show no swap file for C drive.


...............


AFAIK, 4GB max size, for free. Even if the file versions
don't match, it's still a fine addition to a WinXP system
that has too much RAM.

*******

Dataram_RAMDisk_v4_0_5_RC0.msi

5,567,488 bytes
MD5 = 1c9c709c647d979b1277f6d756dce265
SHA1 = 95f123af724206b9c8dd61dd76bf388098fe9b54


[Actually, try here. Took me a while to find this! Immediate download...]
https://filehippo.com/download_ramdisk/14475


Always check the checksums.


I always do. They match...


Thanks for the info Paul. Dataram up and running.
I posted a few notes to Mayayana, which might help. I don't
see how using a swapfile in RAM will speed things up much for me,
since my system rarely uses it, but it certainly speeds the system up
if used for browser cache or TEMP folders ....
The only downside is Windows takes a little longer to shutdown
because it saves the image, so I use a small 128 -- 256MB image.

HTH,


It did, very much so...
Paul

[]'s
--
Don't be evil - Google 2004
We have a new policy - Google 2012
  #11  
Old December 21st 19, 11:07 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Mayayana
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 6,438
Default Ramdisk

"Shadow" wrote

| I don't
| see how using a swapfile in RAM will speed things up much for me,
| since my system rarely uses it, but it certainly speeds the system up
| if used for browser cache or TEMP folders ....

It should reduce wear on SSDs, since the swap file seems
to be used even when it's not needed.


  #12  
Old December 21st 19, 11:09 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Mayayana
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 6,438
Default Ramdisk

"Shadow" wrote

| 4) I had tried Dataram previously, but it crashed a lot. Not the
| version recommended by Paul though. So I'm going to keep track of the
| TBC(time between crashes). Softperfect only corrupted the image file
| once in 6 months, but required re-installing the driver and copying my
| browser profile from a backup.

I would never use it for anything but swap, so
I'm not worried about that. Using it for TEMP
or other folders seems dubious to me, and I don't
enable much browser cache.


  #13  
Old December 22nd 19, 12:24 AM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Shadow
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,638
Default Ramdisk

On Sat, 21 Dec 2019 17:09:41 -0500, "Mayayana"
wrote:

"Shadow" wrote

| 4) I had tried Dataram previously, but it crashed a lot. Not the
| version recommended by Paul though. So I'm going to keep track of the
| TBC(time between crashes). Softperfect only corrupted the image file
| once in 6 months, but required re-installing the driver and copying my
| browser profile from a backup.

I would never use it for anything but swap, so
I'm not worried about that. Using it for TEMP
or other folders seems dubious to me, and I don't
enable much browser cache.


Browsers do an incredible amount of writing, reading then
deleting files in the cache/profile folders, even with all the
"private browsing" and other settings. Can't find an article that
actually measures it, but I did read an article where it said it's
probably the biggest wear and tear on SSD's.
As to swapfile, yes, Windows uses it, even if you have oodles
of physical RAM. Not sure how much though.
Someone should measure them ... I don't know a software that
can measure disk usage by a program.
Trying Filemon. Filter = "palemoon".
Starting Palemoon. Less than a second to load. 881 accesses to
the disk in that time.
Typed in Majorgeeks.com. Press enter. Another 400 entries.
It's a lot. But it didn't register ANY accesses to my profile
folder on RAMDISK Z:, All of them were to my C: drive
Filemon is obviously not the right tool for the job.

[]'s
--
Don't be evil - Google 2004
We have a new policy - Google 2012
  #14  
Old December 22nd 19, 02:36 AM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Mayayana
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 6,438
Default Ramdisk

"Shadow" wrote

| Trying Filemon. Filter = "palemoon".
| Starting Palemoon. Less than a second to load. 881 accesses to
| the disk in that time.
| Typed in Majorgeeks.com. Press enter. Another 400 entries.
| It's a lot. But it didn't register ANY accesses to my profile
| folder on RAMDISK Z:, All of them were to my C: drive
| Filemon is obviously not the right tool for the job.

Those are almost all reads, PM loading DLLs, loading
prefs, that sort of thing. A ramdisk wouldn't make a difference
there. And my understanding is that the wear on an SSD
comes only from writes. You might be right about cache,
though I have my PM cache limited to 10 MB. Maybe I should
just disable it. A site being cached for good reason is rare
these days because alomst every page is created on-call,
which means browsers ar never getting a 302, which means
they never use their cached pages. Caching is outdated.


  #15  
Old December 28th 19, 09:50 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Mayayana
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 6,438
Default Ramdisk

"Paul" wrote

| Dataram RAMDisk Driver
| V4.0.4.2
| Dataram RAMDiskVE Driver
| Dataram, Inc.
|

An update and warning on this:

I installed v. 3.5.130 for XP support. The most recent
versions don't support XP and a bit further back they
switched to .Net v. 4, which I prefer to avoid. It all
worked very well from the start and continues to work
well.

Except.... When I opened Visual Studio 6 I was getting
errors. It appears that the Dataram author is talented
with low-level operations but somewhat ignorant of
GUI programming. The program uses several ActiveX
controls, unnecessarily. And the installer makes an
unforgiveable mess of Registry settings. It actually
changes some specific interface settings without
registering the controls. I had to unregister and
re-register the system versions of those controls. It
was an amazingly messed up installer. And when I uninstall
I'll need to remember to watch out for corruption again.

The only thing
I can think of is that maybe the MSI was made by
a very messed up MSI maker. The only clue is that the
program used to make the MSI, as listed in the Summary
Info, is "Windows Installer Editor Standalone". I'm not
sure if that's an actual program or a default value used
when someone sets up their own MSI using something
like Wix.

At any rate, beware of all versions. The author clearly
doesn't know how to do a proper software install. There
could also be problems with the .Net version. I was going
to send them a note but they seem to be very evasive.
There's no email listed on their website. There's only an
option for paying customers to get a "support ticket".

Weird. But it works when nothing else did.


 




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