32GB of RAM for RAMDisk or other uses

Hi all,

I just got my new W530 in and have 4 sticks of 8GB ram sitting around. I figured, what the hell, I'll put it in there and see what happens. I've looked around for this info and haven't found much, especially more recent info that accounts for this much RAM, so I put it to the gurus here...

Firstly...I've got all this memory and remembered people playing around with RAMDisks back in the day. I couldn't afford the overhead then, but now I'm wondering if anyone is using it for any actual/noticeable improvement on their system. I've disabled the page file, and I don't see much benefit moving the individual caches for, say, Chrome and Firefox onto volatile memory that disappears each time I shut down my laptop. Secondly, if not RAMDisk, what does one do with 32GB of RAM?

Tl;dr
1. Anyone using a ram disk setup effectively? If so, what do you put into that drive?
2. Anyone using 32GB of ram in other ways to improve performance?

 

What type of HDD you have on your laptop and which OS you running?

 

RamDISKS are useful as browser caches and pagefile. I honestly haven't been able to see a use for them since I got the Samsung 840 pro.
More RAM is fun to use for virtual machines, you can run 3 or 4 at the same time with plenty of breathing space. Personally, I can't utilize more than 16gb of RAM (I reserve 4gb for my minecraft server) so extra is wasted power for me.

 

I have a Crucial M4 mSata 256GB running on a SATA 2 port. OS is Windows 7 Pro.

So, since I don't play minecraft and don't need VMs on this machine, browser cache is pretty much the only useful thing so far...that's kinda what I found in my own searches too...

 

DataRam Ramdisk software is free for a 4GB or less ramdisk and the latest version works really well. It can load a designated *.img file at startup and save it on shutdown so the ram disk doesn't disappear when you shut down. I had it set up with my FF, Chrome and Outlook folders as well as my temp directory before I had an mSATA on top of a main SSD drive. I figured it would deal with alot of the random writes and save wear a bit on my ssd drive. But I'm not using it anymore because the speed improvement isn't really that notable with ssd's and there is a bit of a hit during shutdown when it writes the data back to disk. My mSATA is setup with a cache partition, a hibernation partition and there's plenty of room left for a pagefile, temp directory and the other overactive data files/directories.

I would definitely recommend a RamDisk with a standard HDD, though.

It was also handy as a way to have that data (like my FF settings) backed up. You can copy the *.img file for safe keeping - and also have different files/configurations set up to load if you like.

 

I play with Ram disk just for fun and testing.Unless you are going to install a program what is the point? I mean I don't think it would cuase a problem but it would just show you have too much RAM.

The basics what are you doing? I said install an app? OK I guess great but once you open it would load in RAM? Page file? Two things. You have so much RAM page file hits almost don't happen. How big of RAM disk are you setting up? If you set up an amount of RAM disk for a page file it. What benifit? Do you really give the OS so little credit for doing what it was designed to to.

Unless you are doing a certain application that you will know benifits. No reason considr maybe 32GB of RAM is too much?

 

Somebody was calling me?
At first I played with RAMDisk for some time and became very skilled with it.
As someone said above DATARAM Ramdisk is OK. It is NOT fast though and has bad 4K reads and writes... compared to other of course. It is good because of good GUI where you can start learning about ramdisk and using save/load image.
I use QSOFT Enterprise which is MUCH faster. Russian version is FREE. English I guess not But as it has almost no GUI you can try to use russian.

Why would you use RAMDisk? For 2 tasks:
- Temp folder. When you install programs, or do anything at all which goes to TEMP folder you may set it to use RAMdisk. It will save write to the SSD and make it install faster. Just pay attention that nowadays SSDs can handle writes much better than previous and will live for 10 years or so if you will not use it in a very hard way. So advantage of prolonging life is... questionable for some type of people. I say: if I can prolong then why not?
- Page file LOL. No, seriously - PAGEFILE! I am not joking. The only reason why pagefile usualy is disabled on SSD is writes that it produces to the SSD's cells. You may be shocked but even if you have 32GB some programs (games and maybe others) still use 256-512MB of paging file if it exists. So yeah, I create 512MB page file on RAMdisk. I also set OS to clear pagefile before shutdown because anyway ramdrive will be cleared on the next boot. So I am just cautious just in case OS will be frustrated that on the next boot it will have an erased page file.

I must say that I have old bugged 250GB HDD as the only drive in my laptop now. And it has bad blocks (most of them I locked on the hidden partition). And therefore I have bugged OS now. Sometimes I get blue screens while shutting computer off. It happens when it is almost turned off so nothing bad happens. I am not sure if it is because of bugged OS or because of paging file being on ramdrive.
I have zero problems while working on a laptop though (except some because of bugged OS).

 

You know, some people give me crap for having a degree in Russian, but it really is useful for stuff like this.

 

LOL.

I attached this program. But it has complicated way to install.
Unzip file and go to device manager. Then follow screenshots from here
To set properties just right click on the new device in device manager

 

James D, don't even get started with pagefile to RAM. Pagefile is rarely needed or used any more, with only exception for RAM limited machines or legacy apps that require it. And if you're running out of RAM, then you're better served not using it as a RAMdisk. Although I understand concern with SSD, that is also unfounded especially with newer SSD's. But I guess if you want it go for it.

 

You words have logic. But the way games treat paging file does not. For some reason it is still used even if you have enough RAM. I don't say that you need to buy more RAM to create RAMDrive to put there pagefile. That would be stupid. But if you have enough memory and do not know how to use it... make it work somehow

 

I turned mine off last time I reformatted my NP9150 just to see how it would work out, and have had no issues whatsoever.