Software - RAMDisk

[IronBits]

http://www.dataram.com/products-and-services/ramdisk

Freeware version (up to 4 GB disk size).


Universal version for WindowsXP/2000, Vista (32 and 64-bit) Home Basic, Home Premium, Business and Ultimate, Windows Server 2003 Standard, Web and Enterprise Edition
Up to 32 GB disk in Vista and Windows 2003, 2008 Server (paid mode)
Save and load features allow RAMDisk to appear as persistent storage even through reboots

[IronBits]

Warning!!!

Vista 64 with Service Pack 2

Will BLUE SCREEN and continual REBOOTS

Lucky for me I had dual boot to Windows 7 RC to choose from so I could delete the drivers manually.
Brought Vista up and uninstalled it to remove anything else it had laying around.
<whew!>

Have not tried it on anything else tonight, so be careful.
Others have tried it and not had problems...

[IronBits]

Another free one
http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html#ImDisk

[Digital Parasite]

Another free one
http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html#ImDisk

Does this one work well with Vista SP2?

[IronBits]

Didn't try that one and gave up for now.

[enderak]

I'm using ImDisk with Vista SP2 (64-bit, specifically), and it works great, just as long as you follow the instructions regarding UAC and testsigning.

Also, this forum post is helpful if you want your RAM disk to be automatically set up when you reboot: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=2143 (otherwise you have to manually set it up each time you reboot).

[Paratima]

IB, that DR DataRam you linked to first sure looks a lot like one I tried several years ago. Not sure if it's the same folks, but it blew the guts out of one of my NT4 boxes. I didn't try another until a couple of years ago, with this Farstone product (http://www.farstone.com/software/virtual-hard-drive.htm). Costs about 30 bucks and runs really nice. Have had no problems with it, but I confess I haven't really stressed it the way I did some of my work machines back then. I got it packaged with a DVD/CD emulator (http://www.farstone.com/software/virtualdrive-pro.htm) that I love. Running on XP.

YMMV, but it's got a 30-day free trial. :thumbs:

[LAURENU2]

What about the Hard drives that use Memory instead of a platter
You don't have to reload them on Boot

[IronBits]

SSDs are still a tad expensive, and I don't trust them yet.

Thanks for the tip Paratima.
Picked up the pro version and the workstation backup snapshot solution as well.
Should be very handing re-building crunchers after they crash. ;)

[Paratima]

I like 'em. I use them for reorganizing huge blocks of photo files, which I seem to do WAY too often. For anything to do with giant database manipulation, they're the real stuff. Or just for regular tasks that you don't want hitting the hard drive quite so often.

[LAURENU2]

SSDs are still a tad expensive, and I don't trust them yet.

$180.00 for 1 64 GiG drive is do a bull:rotfl:
and with a MTBF of 1 million hours (thats like 114 years of 24/7 service)

[IronBits]

I don't need that much.
The technology is not there yet, getting there, just not quite there yet.
Besides, I have 12GB of ram in this box, never use more than 30%, so put up a 4GB TEMP/TRASH spot so each time I reboot, it's all cleaned out and ready to go - point your web browser cache to it. ;)
Plus, I wanted an easier way to build a cruncher from scratch without starting from scratch...
Now I can create an .img of any HDD, and put it back on in a few minutes and ready to go.
Would work out great for your situation. :D

[alpha]

I've had an SSD netbook since October last year and it works great. It actually has two SSDs - one is faster than the other, but neither are anywhere close to the new SSDs hitting the market. They're perfectly suitable for the light use that a netbook gets (IME, anyway), but I've no experience of how they perform under heavy use.

I'd be happy to buy a large one for use in a desktop machine once the price comes down and the capacity goes up.

[IronBits]

Two nice SSDs - both 120gb

$335 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609461 *better w/128mb cache - uses latest controller
http://diskcompare.com/disk/815/

$300 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227361 * version 2 controller, 8 channels
http://diskcompare.com/disk/558/

http://diskcompare.com/compare/?d=815&d=558

Also, here is some good reading on SSD: http://techreport.com/articles.x/17136