Anybody using a RAM disk?

[flip-mode]

I'm up to 24 GB in my CAD workstation and figured I can spare some RAM to try a RAM disk. I'm using Dataram's RAM disk software since that's what Storage Review used for it's RAM disk benchmarking.

Just got started 5 minutes ago so no real opinions yet. Also, much of the work I do has to syncronize with the very slow server so that's going to be a dead weight for the time being.

[flip-mode]

OK, something bad just happened. Don't know what. But suddenly my C drive was completely out of space. I disabled the RAM drive, uninstalled the software, and deleted any files, but there's still something wrong. First, my profile has disappeared from c:\users. Second, my C drive is still showing 92gb used when it should be closer to 60gb used.

Strangely, I can still get to my profile - it just does not show up in c:\users.

I'm pretty irritated at the moment.

[flip-mode]

Looks like I might have to come in this weekend and restore a backup disk image. Thank goodness for disk backups.

[morphine]

Sounds like you partitioned the wrong disk there when you were messing with the RAM drive

[flip-mode]

I don't understand how I would have done that. And the RAM disk was only for 4GB - I'm missing 30GB from C. And then there's the invisibility of my profile in c:\users.

[just brew it!]

OK, something bad just happened. Don't know what. But suddenly my C drive was completely out of space. I disabled the RAM drive, uninstalled the software, and deleted any files, but there's still something wrong. First, my profile has disappeared from c:\users. Second, my C drive is still showing 92gb used when it should be closer to 60gb used.

Strangely, I can still get to my profile - it just does not show up in c:\users.

I'm pretty irritated at the moment.

Was the RAM disk software configured to create a backup image file? That could've chewed up the extra space. No idea why your profile would disappear though.

Edit: Never mind, just saw your followup post.

Sounds like you partitioned the wrong disk there when you were messing with the RAM drive

That's definitely a possibility...

***

Other than for some very specific use cases, I don't think a RAM disk is going to help you much anyway. The disk caching algorithms in modern OSes are generally pretty good, and you're (usually) better off allowing the OS to manage the cache for you instead of attempting to manage the cache manually (which is essentially what you're doing with a RAM disk).

One scenario where I could see it making a big difference is when (for whatever reason) you need to run a 32-bit OS on a box that has more than 4GB of RAM. The RAM disk might allow you to leverage that extra RAM which would otherwise be invisible to the OS...

[flip-mode]

My interest in Ram disks has certainly lessened over the last 2 hours.

[flip-mode]

Update:

hiberfil.sys at 18 GB plus a 24 GB pagefile is where all of my hard disk space went to. I had upgraded my RAM just one day before trying the RAM drive, which is why I attributed the lost disk space to the RAM drive. The RAM drive was working perfectly normally and got wrongful blame here.

As for my profile folder being invisible in the users directory - still no explanation for that, but after restoring an older drive image the problem existed even then, so that was not the fault of the RAM drive software either.

At the moment I have am running on a completely fresh install; I have disabled hibernation and I have set the page file to be 1000 MB max. Before giving me much advice on setting my own pagefile, I read this first.

So now my hard drive usage is down from over 100 GB to 52 GB.

More experimentation with the RAM drive stuff will have to happen at some later day - I don't have the time right now

[Waco]

I've played with them in the past but the use is pretty limited now that Vista/7 tend to cache user data very aggressively.