[nd4spdbh]

i actually just started using a ramdrive myself. have a 768mb one, and i actually pointed windows xp to use 512mb of that for pagefile. i know it sounds counter intuitive as the page file is spost to be "ram on hard drive if ram runs out" BUT alot of programs load stuff to the pagefile REGARDLESS of ram availability. as well as temp and tmp folders and FF cache, this has made things amazing. add in Flashfire for a ssd buffer on ram and its been awesome.

[safemode]

Nothing loads to the pagefile.

You are just wasting ram and forcing the use of the pagefile as far as windows is concerned. I'm not sure if window's ram drives work the same as tmpfs in linux land but if they do, and it should, then ram drives are "Potential" capacities. Meaning, you can create a 1GB ram drive, but it wont use 1GB of ram unless you move 1GB of files onto it. By putting the pagefile on your ramdisk, you have removed however large your pagefile is from your usable ram pool. This would then increase the potential of the pagefile being used.

Not only is it slower to access data from swap located in ram rather than just directly in non-swapped ram like it would be if the pagefile wasn't taking up ram space, but you are removing potential space for temporary / cache files that you now either have to let write to disk or force you to increase the size of the ramdisk and further limit the usable ram in your system.

The pagefile will get stuff written to it even if you're not using all your ram because often cached data is re-retrieved faster from a single point (pagefile) than from random places on the disk. Also, pushing un-used apps to swap during idle time is less costly than having to push them there during high contention times. But these are preventive measures you dont need if you dont care about re-retrieving cache data from disk or if you never come close to using all of your ram (2GB is really hard to fill up under normal use).

So, get rid of the pagefile altogether, it's not needed if you have 2GB of ram. You can keep the ramdrive at 700+MB (assuming this is a potential capacity and it only takes up as much ram as needed as you write data to it). Make it the windows Temp dir (not that anything really uses it) and see if you can't make windows use it for it's windows updates downloads, as well as your download dir and cache for your web browser. Basically, anything you dont care about losing during a reboot.

If ram drives are pre-allocated and actually take up ram for however large they are in windows, then i suggest making them only as big as necessary and only put data that gets frequently written to it to minimize writes to your ssd. possibly use a cheap usb thumb drive for the downloads dir in that case.

[BurnerD]

Just did this and saw a noticeable performance improvement web brwosing. Thanks to the OP for posting this.

[rogredpack]

Thanks for the instructions! This is the first thing I've tried that actually felt like a speedup.

Originally Posted by ubiquityman

2. Create a 256-512MB RAM DRIVE (I used drive letter B
Follow the directions here. Search for "Gavotte Ramdisk"
Free Ramdisk for Windows Vista, XP, 2000 and 2003 Server My Digital Life

Note that for me I had to specify via the radio button "Fixed media" and not "RAM drive" or it didn't work [works fine with fixed media setting, though].
-r

[yorgle]

I just tried this with Opera and noticed some improvement. FYI, to access the setting to change the cache path in Opera, type opera:config in the browser window and scroll down to User Prefs. Click the little triangle to expand the menu and you can then change the "cache directory4" to the letter of your new ramdrive, e.g., R:\ . Be sure to scoll to the bottom and click save before exiting.

[bjd223]

Microsoft has free RAM drive source code that works on everything from Windows 2000 up to Windows 7 (all x32).

I did not compile this code, but have used this on Windows XP and Windows 7 without any issues. The code has been modified to support slightly larger RAM disks then the MS sample.

Just make sure you run it as administrator on Windows 7.

Thanks,
Brian

[bjd223]

Originally Posted by safemode

Nothing loads to the pagefile.

You are just wasting ram and forcing the use of the pagefile as far as windows is concerned. I'm not sure if window's ram drives work the same as tmpfs in linux land but if they do, and it should, then ram drives are "Potential" capacities. Meaning, you can create a 1GB ram drive, but it wont use 1GB of ram unless you move 1GB of files onto it. By putting the pagefile on your ramdisk, you have removed however large your pagefile is from your usable ram pool. This would then increase the potential of the pagefile being used.

Not only is it slower to access data from swap located in ram rather than just directly in non-swapped ram like it would be if the pagefile wasn't taking up ram space, but you are removing potential space for temporary / cache files that you now either have to let write to disk or force you to increase the size of the ramdisk and further limit the usable ram in your system.

The pagefile will get stuff written to it even if you're not using all your ram because often cached data is re-retrieved faster from a single point (pagefile) than from random places on the disk. Also, pushing un-used apps to swap during idle time is less costly than having to push them there during high contention times. But these are preventive measures you dont need if you dont care about re-retrieving cache data from disk or if you never come close to using all of your ram (2GB is really hard to fill up under normal use).

So, get rid of the pagefile altogether, it's not needed if you have 2GB of ram. You can keep the ramdrive at 700+MB (assuming this is a potential capacity and it only takes up as much ram as needed as you write data to it). Make it the windows Temp dir (not that anything really uses it) and see if you can't make windows use it for it's windows updates downloads, as well as your download dir and cache for your web browser. Basically, anything you dont care about losing during a reboot.

If ram drives are pre-allocated and actually take up ram for however large they are in windows, then i suggest making them only as big as necessary and only put data that gets frequently written to it to minimize writes to your ssd. possibly use a cheap usb thumb drive for the downloads dir in that case.

Almost every RAM drive on Windows, that I have seen, is not Dynamic storage, it is Static. Meaning if you want a 512 MB Ram drive, it allocates 512 MB of your memory whether you are using it all or not.

I have 2 GB of RAM, and use a 512MB Ram drive. I have the IE cache which is set at 250 MB in IE and some other random temp stuff on there.

I just hate moving TMP and TEMP to a RAM drive, because sometimes if you try to DL a file larger than the free space on the RAM drive Windows gets super pissed. I have not tried this on Windows 7 yet to see how it handles it though. It might be better.

[freddial]

For some reason I can't change the TMP and TEMP variables from "C:" to "B:". When I click on "Edit variables" only the string after "C:" comes up and I can't get to delete the C and insert B. Any suggestions? Thanks.



;53578]If you have 2GB of ram, I recommend the following performance optimizations for Windows XP:

1. Disable Virtual Memory (swap drive)
Control Panel -> System -> Advanced tab -> Performance [Settings] -> Advanced tab -> Virtual Memory [Change]
Select "No Paging file"

2. Create a 256-512MB RAM DRIVE (I used drive letter B
Follow the directions here. Search for "Gavotte Ramdisk"
Free Ramdisk for Windows Vista, XP, 2000 and 2003 Server My Digital Life

3. Set the TEMP and TMP environment variables to B:\
Control Panel -> System -> Advanced tab -> [Environment Variables]
Edit Variables TEMP and TMP.
(I point both to B:\ since my ramdrive is B: )

4. Set the Internet Explorer (or Firefox Cache) to the RAMdrive
Internet Explorer -> Tools -> Options -> Browsing History [Settings]
Click the [Move Folder] button, and assign the temp folder to your ramdrive.
Change the disk space to be slightly less than the capacity of the RAM drive.
(Firefox is a bit more involved, requires editing of one of the config files)

After doing all that my Mini 9 felt noticeably faster.[/QUOTE]

[dew2]

I'd really like to try this! However the beginner I am,Could someone explain how to change my drive letter in environmental varibles from C:\ to R:\ ? and is it changed in the user or system varibles?
THANKS in advance

[holmes4]

I don't think you can change the drive letter of the boot device. It is recorded in so many places that is an invitation to problems. Why do you want to do that?

If you were to try, you would do it through the Disk Management tool available by right clicking on My Computer and selecting Manage.