How to use RAM as a virtual drive

Most of us these days are loving the SSD performance when using everyday applications like firefox, chrome browser etc as they open almost instantly due to the quicker read and write speeds. Yes it is wonderful but RAM is something which still stands out when it comes to read/write capability but our run of the mill computers and laptops do not have the ability to load applications onto RAM and use the application from there so I am going to show you how to make a partition on your RAM and use it to run your frequently used applications. I can say a million things about how quick a browser becomes or an FTP client etc but you have to see it for yourself to believe that RAM leaves SSD miles behind eating dust when it comes to speed. It feel like the application was already open when you run them off of RAM.

There are plenty of softwares to turn a part of your RAM into a separate disk but I am going to talk about RAMDisk by DATARAM . There are plenty of other softwares available too. I previously used Imdisk as it lets me use more then 4GB of RAM in the partition without having to pay but I didint like it that much (Just personal preference). RAMDisk lets you use upto 4GB without paying and most people dont want/need more then 4GB as we generally dont have a lot to spare and we dont really need too much space any way. Whatever memory we use as Ram disk would not be available for the system to use as RAM so only use the amount you can spare or dont need otherwise.

One important point to note is that having this set up will increase the time your system takes to start up and shut down. RAM disk will loose all the data from RAM when we shut down the system so this software will copy all the 4GB data onto the hard drive every time you shut down and the time it takes depends on your hard drive's write speed. The same thing happens when you start up aswell because everything is loaded onto the RAM when you start up from the hard drive. If you have a SSD this process will take lesser time but it would still take longer to boot and shut down as compared to a system that does not use this setup of RAM disk.

Lets see how to do this now :

Download the DATARAM's RAM disk software first : From here (Download link is right at the bottom ) You need the free version only for upto 4GB partition.

Run the ram disk software and you will be taken to settings page where you have to select "Unformatted"

The field that asks for size of the disk has a limit of 4092mb so fill it with whatever size you want your disk to be.

After the above we need to go to the next tab which says load and save. As we talked earlier this is for saving the data on hard disk on shut down and reloading on start up onto RAM disk. Tick the fields that say save data on shut down and start up. Location that is automatically filled in shouldnt be tinkled with else your software will not find the image where to load data from on start up.

Now click on Start Ram disk. After this we need to format the newly created disk.

Go to windows file explorer and now you should be able to see your newly created Disk. Right click on the new disk and select Format option which will open a new window. Leave everything as it is including the sixe and just change the file system to NTFS and tick the quick format option and click start. Your disk should be formatted quickly and is now ready to use.

What can you use it for?

Use your imagination and do whatever you like with it. You could move your browser cache onto it. Use it for the temp folder which gets a lot of read and writes. You could have your game on this disk so you would be playing without the hard disk coming into the equation.

I hope this helps

Any questions or stuck in the process? Fire away your queries.

There is a comprehensive list of RAM disk softwares on Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_RAM_drive_software

A great use of RAM disk is in cases when you have 4GB or more memory installed, but the Operating System you are using is 32 bit.
In this cases, a 32 bit OS refuses to use memory beyond 4 GB and that unused memory can be used as a superfast RAM disk.

However note that although a 32 bit OS uses only memory upto 4 GB, this limit can be easily bypassed by
patching the Windows kernel (ntoskrnl.exe and friends) and enabling PAE (Physical Address Extension) .
Infact I use 8 GB memory on Windows 7 x32

The other method is to use a 64 bit OS altogether.

My computer has 1GB ram. Is this going to be of any help to my computers speed?

The main bottleneck in computers performance is the hard disk, not the processor (unlike as many people believe).
Upgrading the processor will only help if you need to carry out processor intensive task like bruteforcing passwords, video encoding/decoding, rendering/animation etc.

In fact pc's are so fast nowadays, that the processor has to sit for ages so that disk provides it the data its needs.
So upgrading the hard disk to a solid state one should be the first option.
Next, consider adding a few more memory. Lastly upgrade the processor & motherboard (the most expensive).

However some people upgrade the RAM before as it is much cheaper than SSD.

I think your computer would benefit more from using Readyboost instead of the above setup. You do not have enough RAM. Try a decent 4GB flash drive with good read/write speed and see if that makes things faster for you. You could also try adding two chips of 2GB each if you want to spend some money on it.

Unfortunately I cannot spend money on SSD right now as I am saving up for my new car. Only if my dad feels a little generous one of these days. I only use the browser and utorrent nothing else so even 1gb is enough. Once I get my car I will hopefully buy a new computer because even mobile phones come with 2GB ram these days.

You could make things faster if you installed Chrome OS instead of Windows for the time being.

I must add that I do not use this anymore. It was good fun to try but in actual working conditions it is a very marginal difference in performance that is barely noticable. I have a SSD and decent about of ram so my applications open pretty quickly without this aswell. Those who have a very slow hard drive or even a 7200rpm may see a noticable difference but the most noticable difference would be for people who have a 5400rpm hard drive.