[l0st]

I have 768mb of ram and running xp. would it be good if I moved the page file to a ram disk? say, form a 100mb ramdisk and use 90mb for the page and 10mb for my temp directories..?

or is 768 not enough ram to have a ram disk?

from what I've read, a ram disk page file would be faster than a separate page partition..and I'm all about inexpensive, quick loading times!

only disadvantage I could see with it is it wipes your page file and temp directories after a reboot, but I'm also reading that that's not exactly a bad thing..

I'll be using this ram disk

thanks!

[DosFreak]

sigh

go ahead, knock yourself out.

[peterh]

No it wouldn`t.

You forget the purpose of the page file is to swap memory to disk when you don`t have enough memory available.

Putting it into ram is self defeating, you will be using up more ram not saving it and have a dramatic reduction in performance, NOT an increase in performance. You will end up with less ram for your programs and thus cause more use of the pagefile #, so your computer will slow down.

[theefool]

There are multiple ways to improve the pagefile performance. Who really knows if any way is better then others. MS says you must have a pagefile where the OS resides. Other people say you should have a pagefile on a seperate HDD, preferably on a seperate controller. I myself have a page file located on the same partition as my OS, and a 2nd pagefile located on a 2nd drive on a 2nd controller.

If you want to speed up boot time, get either SCSI or SATA and use RAID 0.

[jaylittle]

Storing your page file on a ramdrive is retarded. Storing it on a ramdrive that uses a seperate set of RAM is slightly less retarded. Instead of investing in a PCI ramdrive... just invest in more RAM. You'll be a better person for it.

[jaylittle]

/me sighs...

The Page File is typically only used when you run out of physical memory. Instead of storing your Page File on a RAM DISK why not just use those 2 gigs of RAM and supplement the memory on your actual motherboard? This will reduce your reliance upon the page file and any kind of hack (i.e. second power supplies for your memory card or saving the ramdisk data to your hd on shutdown) that will end up costing you far more time than your paging ever did to begin with.

Your statements about the system cache are invalid. Simply put the system cache is stored in RAM, not in the PageFile. The OS isn't going to cache things into SWAP as doing so would be horribly stupid and not help performance in the least.

The only way such a hack would ever be useful is if your machine simply was unable to hold anymore RAM. But if this is the case perhaps you ought to consider buying a machine that can better meet your needs rather than resorting to PCI Ram Drives as way of working around the limitation. No matter what that memory you waste on that PCI RAM Drive will always be better utilized if it is provided to the OS directly as the OS is much more efficient at managing its own memory than you will ever be.

Honestly APK I would think you would understand these concepts better given that you are the author of some sort of memory management utility for Windows. /me snickers...

[l0st]

wow...wasn't expecting all this.....

alec, I knew you had a hardware ram drive. read it somewhere on one of these threads; that's what made me remember about these things. I was originally looking at flash hdd's and pci ram drives a year ago, but I decided against it. I didn't think a flash drive would be good for the os, but maybe I'm wrong.

as to the person who said using ram for your page file and temp folders is retarded; I did it, and photoshop seemed to like it a hell of a lot more than my separate page partition.

this was just a crazy little experiment I decided to do out of lack of sleep and curiosity. plus, I was bored. :p lol, I did notice though that a couple of my games lagged, so I changed it back....more or less. I just have my temp directories on the ram drive now.

I'm not exactly familiar with this stuff. I'm just working with what knowledge I have, plus a few new facts here and there. I've wanted near-instant boot times, and a lightning-fast page file since I first heard of the ram drive (well, ram disk..saw it on my sister's old mac. kicked ass, it did!) unfortunately, I'm a 17 year old kid with no money. ^^; I'm going to have to wait until I can afford a pci ram drive and/or a flash hdd.

anyway...thanks for the input. I'll keep this software ram drive for my temp directories. and I'll stick to my page partition, only because I can't successfully do what I want with the ammount of ram I have.

hm...maybe steal that 20gb laptop drive from my dell..see what I can do with that....

[DosFreak]

APK, I removed my other post because you posted "Ramdrives can be NTFS formatted & data", my post was kind of redundant, I was in the process of rewriting my post when you PM me, then I had to close this post so I decided not to repost it.

Quote:

jaylittle

The OS isn't going to cache things into SWAP as doing so would be horribly stupid and not help performance in the least.

IIRC, NT by default pages it's kernel which you can disable through a registry tweak.

Sorry l0st, but someone had to ruin your thread. I'm going to have to close it. I could just delete the offending post but that ruins the context and locking it and saving it is so much better.