Forget super slow SSD's help me set up a Ram Drive

The idea here is to mimic the operation of the Adaptive Memory Technology used in hybrid hard drives. -

Hybrid Hard Drives use both a larger mechanical drive coupled with a smaller SSD drive . The software for the adaptive memory technology places the programs/windows functions you run the most into the small SSD drive so they will load/run faster. It does this by using using advanced algorithms to decide what critical data to place on the drive.

These drives are meant to give you SSD like speeds without the SSD price tag and for the most part, they do come close to SSD speeds. However a Ram Drive can be up to 10 times faster than an SSD. !!

I just learned about these hybrid drives last night and thought well gee.. my 3.0 USB flash drive is faster than my hard drive anyway, so why isn't there some type of Adaptive Memory Technology for flash drives? This would be even better once USB 3.1 comes out.. it will be 10 times faster than USB 3.0!

Well searching didn't find anything like AMT for flash drives. Someone should make it !! There is ReadyBoost or eBooster but this is not the same. ReadyBoost doesn't create any virtual ram drives via memory like a ram drive, it just cashes pre-fetched data into the (much slower than Ram) USB drive itself for a small performance boost.

Using a ram drive/disk seems the best way to go. A Ram Drive creates virtual hard drive space in ram memory so when you load and run the program it's always running directly from system ram. This is what makes it so much faster than SSD's. I have 8 gigs of system ram anyway so I plan to use 4 gigs for the ram disk.

The thing is.. I don't know what that Adaptive Memory Technology decides is best to put on the SSD - or in my case, on the much faster than SSD, Ram Drive. The software is made to do the calculations automatically to decide whats needed on the SSD , I will not have that benefit so I'll need to configure the ram drive by hand. I plan to use Promo Ram Disk because it can save ram disk data on shutdown or at the click of a button. These programs have to save the data to hard drive temporarily because otherwise on shutdown all data is lost.

Does anyone have good guide lines on how to pick and choose what to place on the ram drive for the best performance boost?

Hi,

I have my own cloud server with SAN and use something similar. The SANs have SSDs in them for caching frequently accessed data but run onn SAS drives. If you are running a server, NGINX with Varnish cache is supposed to be the best combination (300-400 times faster than Apache) NGINX is not prone to DDOS attacks as it works differently to Apache and not reliant on threads. From what I understand Varnish uses Random Access Memory for caching. I am using Apache with NGINX as a reverse proxy server and it has speeded my websites up significantly.

Earthblaze

RAM drives have been around forever okay maybe not forever but since I used to think doing cool ANSI skulls was elite and moving your page file onto a RAM drive was cool.

Even though they have been around for a long time the fundamentals still apply:

1. RAM is volatile, don't store anything you want to keep on it.
2. Cache frequently used apps on there and they will start quicker.
3. Only use if you have enough physical memory to make it worth it.

USB thumb drives don't use the fastest memory. I've only seen them getting real-world speeds anywhere from 30-70 MB/s transfer rates. One of the fastest USB 3.0 thumb drives gets about 230 MB/s.

Which is about twice as fast as a 7200 RPM external USB 3.0 hard drive which gets about 110 MB/s read speeds. But, much slower than an SSD. The maximum theoretical speed for USB 3.0 is 5 Gb/s or 600 MB/s. SSD's have already started exceeding USB 3.0 maximum theoretical speeds.

I'm not sure which USB thumb drive you have, but it's definitely not faster than an SSD. And with the current USB 3.0 limitations, no USB thumb drive can be as fast as an SSD. And as cheap as SSD's are becoming, there's no reason not to get one for a boot drive. SSD's are about the same price as USB thumb drives anyway and getting cheaper and faster.

There are currently SSD's that read at 800 MB/s to 2 GB/s, and write from 700 MB/s to 1 GB/s. You won't get anywhere near those speeds with USB 3.0.

reply to post by _BoneZ_


Yeah.. i know.. hence the reason for using the Ram drive.. which is what the thread is about. I just thought if someone could come up with adaptive memory technology for large 3.1 USB's they might offer a good boost for those who cannot afford an SSD or run a Ram drive. 10 times the current speed of 3.0 should show much improvement if it were made to work.

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


I've used Ram Disk before, though I haven't used it in awhile. I'm not sure there is a way to pick specific area of RAM to use for ram disk since the OS or a program might use the selected RAM addresses. I've heard of people starting up Firefox or other programs on RAM for a nice speed up, but it's limited since everything has to be moved from RAM back to the HDD on shutdown and back to RAM on start up.

reply to post by earthblaze


Cool beans.. but I'm not running a server. It's a laptop with 8 gigs of system ram, and 2 gigs of graphics ram. I need to know the best things to use the ram disk for. I know temp folders and browser cache are popular items. I even have many games under 4 gigs I can test out but I want all critical system operations that cause slow downs to run from the ram drive as much as possible. I want to use it to make my system all around as fast as possible.

reply to post by kx12x


Right.. thats why i choose Primo Ramdisk. They save on shutdown or you can use the quick save button when you make changes to the data on the drive - But Primo doesn't re-record the entire data of 4 gigs - it only adds the updated data to the image it already has, making backups and shutdown much faster. I know startup may be slower while it initially loads the data for the ram drive but for those crazy speeds, i can live with that LOL.

My goal is to have a PC with at least 24 gigs of ram. I can use as much as 8 or 12 gigs for the ram drive and use a 12 gig SSD to back up the ram data image. That should make loading startup pretty quick. I can't afford that right now but to me, it's the best way to make a PC blazing fast.

JohnPhoenix
for those who cannot afford an SSD or run a Ram drive.

I'll give you an example: this SSD is the same size and price as the fastest USB 3.0 thumb drive I linked to earlier. You'll notice that the SSD is twice as fast as the thumb drive for the same price. If someone can afford a thumb drive, they can afford a much faster SSD.

As far as the RAM drive, you still have to read/write back and forth to the hard drive, so it almost defeats the purpose, like another member pointed out.

My Firefox loads instantly at first startup from my SSD.


ETA: Everything loads instantly from my SSD. The only exception being Photoshop, but a large program like that taking longer to load is to be expected. And my SSD is a few years old and isn't as fast as the ones that are available today.

I just don't see going through the trouble of using a RAMdisk when SSD's are plenty cheap and fast enough, unless you're using a server, in my professional techie opinion.

Using a RAMdisk isn't worth it... especially if you only have 8gb.
Buy yourself an SSD. The practical difference between using an SSD and a RAMdisk in most applications will be little to none. Unless you needed it for synthetic benchmarks, or for apps that demanded realtime response, it's overkill. Add that to the fact that it's volatile, and you'll be removing 4gb of RAM that could be used elsewhere, and you're really not doing yourself any favours.

The point folks and why it will be worth it to me is I am trying to simulate the functionality of the hybrid hard drives with what I have on hand right now. So working with what i have on hand i see a way to make the faster speeds happen. Sure i can get a 32 gig ssd for 45 bucks but if thats all thats needed - why buy a hybrid instead? More space. It wouldn't work for my laptop with only one hard drive slot.

Since this is even faster than the SSD.. seems to me if i could duplicate the functionality of the hybrids using the ram drive, it would be faster than the hybrids, and i'd of course be happy. I need to know exactly what those Adaptive Memory Technology programs choose to save. Then i could duplicate it's functionality exactly.

JohnPhoenix
The point folks and why it will be worth it to me is I am trying to simulate the functionality of the hybrid hard drives with what I have on hand right now. So working with what i have on hand i see a way to make the faster speeds happen. Sure i can get a 32 gig ssd for 45 bucks but if thats all thats needed - why buy a hybrid instead? More space. It wouldn't work for my laptop with only one hard drive slot.

Since this is even faster than the SSD.. seems to me if i could duplicate the functionality of the hybrids using the ram drive, it would be faster than the hybrids, and i'd of course be happy. I need to know exactly what those Adaptive Memory Technology programs choose to save. Then i could duplicate it's functionality exactly.

It won't work like that. A RAMdrive can't simulate the functionality of a hybrid, because they're designed differently. Whatever data you put in the RAMdrive might be accessible more quickly, but hybrid drives are designed to intelligently detect what data is used most often, and to cache that. Hybrids use the non-volatile nature of the drive to store data about what files are accessed when, and to determine whether or not each individual file should be cached. Being volatile, a RAMdrive can't do this, and the few options you have in terms of storing data there (e.g. page file) won't be able to replicate those results.

This is the whole point of Adaptive Memory. The drive detects whatever file is used most often and makes it accessible through the SSD cache. A RAMdrive won't allow you to do that. You'll only be able to put specific programs or files on there, and can't differentiate between what individual files of those programs are worth having on the RAMdrive and what aren't.
It's simply not worth doing.

Currently I'm on linux running on RAM, entire linux was copied to RAM from a thumbdrive and boot from there. All applications start from RAM and running on RAM, I dont need hard disk at all. The best is..... my pc dont have working CPU fan and still it run! (vista hang after 15 minutes - too hot)

So the answer is - Running Linux on RAM
Would that answer your question ?

reply to post by NullVoid


How are you doing it? That may be a great option for my next dedicated Linux machine.

I know you can install and run Windows 7 from a Ram Disk.

Covers installing Windows 7 to VHD, installing and configuring Grub4Dos, installing FiRaDisk driver.
Finally, describes loading VHD image into RAM and booting it.

reboot.pro...


I use a few Linux distros myself but I normally just triple boot. ( Love Zorin 7.1, Vector Linux 7, PC-BSD Isotope 9.1 ( BSD, not Linux but it plays almost all Linux apps as well as millions of BSD apps - check it out!)

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I'm not giving up on this ram drive for performance boost idea. I don't believe you guys really know what your talking about. We have programs like Process Explorer and Process Monitor by Sysinternals that show what applications and processes are reading and writing to the drive. All I have to do is collate the data for a few days to see which ones most slow the pc down and put them in a ram drive along with temp and browsing, I may be able to get away with the drive being only 2 gigs leaving me with 6.. but i'll tell you.. i'm a gamer that plays the latest games My AMD chip has 2 gigs but if the game needs more it uses a system ram as shared. This type of shared ram via the AMD A8 APU is very efficient. I should be able to make good use of 6.. I don't think even any of the modern games use that much.

I'm going to do a lil more research then give it a try. It HAS to give me some gains. I'll report back.

BTW folks.. you know they do make non volatile DIMMs now. They are not cheap but do able. I believe one day ram and ram drives will replace all other forms of computer processing needs and storage with backing up to something like a SSD. It's just the next logical step. When we get to that point (coming soon) people will be astonished that anyone would ever run an operating system off of something as slow as an SSD. LOL..

JohnPhoenix
How are you doing it? That may be a great option for my next dedicated Linux machine.

Pretty much all versions of Linux can be ran from either a Live CD or Live USB thumb drive (if your BIOS supports booting from a USB thumb drive).

When Linux runs from either a Live CD or Live Thumb Drive, it loads everything into RAM and runs from RAM. You don't need a hard drive installed at all to use Linux.

What's more, you can also set the Live Linux USB Thumb Drive (not Live CD) to accept new apps and data just like a hard drive. You can install all your apps, and save all your settings if you set the Live USB up that way. Then you can move the USB from computer to computer with all your apps and settings already saved on the Live USB.

reply to post by opethPA

RAM drives have been around forever okay maybe not forever but since I used to think doing cool ANSI skulls was elite and moving your page file onto a RAM drive was cool.

But a page file is only used when you are low on ram to simulate ram, its an overspill mechanism. In other words : if a ram drive is just ram pretending to be a drive it would be redundant to use it to store a page file which is only used when you are out of RAM.

Or maybe i mis-understood what you meant?

I run windows 7 64bit
16 gigs of RAM
I have a 8 Gig RAM drive

The temp locations I redirect are:
System temp files
Browser Cache Files
The Page File (4 gig)
User temp files

Besides the speed boost, putting the swap file and other temp files into RAM saves the SSD from burning out faster.

SSD is the way to go. It will transform your life. Your old slow laptop will run like new again but only faster.