Also known as a Forensics Ramdisk, an SSH Ramdisk is versatile tool in iPhone research. Publicly available methods work on all devices vulnerable to limera1n. Retrieving data from a device; setting up a bare-bones Jailbreak, with AFC2 access; or even installing a full Jailbreak, as BlackGeek demonstrated with Geeksn0w; See also. File System Crypto. MemSQL is a high-performance, in-memory database that combines the horizontal scalability of distributed systems with the familiarity of SQL.
Most users use RAMDisk to speed up applications like: Games, Internet Explorer cache for faster web surfingAudio and Video editing, CAD programs, Software compilers, Databases, Speeding up CD duplication SETI processing, TEMP files, Swap space, Web server cache, Custom applications with high I/O, high bandwidth, or high security requirements. Some users like the security of the RAMDisk because if you do not choose to back up the RAMDisk, all information will be wiped upon power loss or shutdown. Since RAM cannot store any trace of information without power, you know the information is gone for good (not just hidden on a track of a hard drive that can be easily undeleted and even recovered after successive over-writes).An additional feature of a RAMDisk is that it will never wear out. You can access it at maximum bandwidth 24/7/365 without fear of mechanical failure, or fragmentation (a RAMDisk can become fragmented just like any other disk, but it does not take a performance hit like a physical disk does when it becomes ragmented).
A RAMDisk operating at maximum bandwidth does not produce excessive heat, noise or vibrations.A long time to run one program will lead to the same sector of the hard disk be read and written frequently, there will be a bad disk sectors. Use a RAM disk can avoid such a situation. Another reason for using a RAM disk is security or privacy. Once the computer is restarted or shutdown, the contents of the RAM disk are lost (when the auto-save feature is disabled). For some services or applications, this is an important attribute that contributes to the protection of sensitive data or information. Auto-load the most recent image:Keep the most recently used RAM disk image loaded in GiliSoft RAMDisk when you restart system. If check this option but your RAMDisk not create with an image file, it will create an same size Empty RAMDisk when system next startup.
Save the image upon restart or shutdown:Save your RAM disk image automatically when you turn off or restart your PC. Save the image during hibernation:Save your RAM disk image automatically when your computer goes into Sleep or Hibernation mode. Backup the image before saving it:Automatically makes a secondary backup of the data in your RAM disk when you save it as an image.
In the event of a system crash or power loss, the image file will still be preserved. Note: If you load the image after a system crash, GiliSoft RAMDisk will ask if you want to repair the image. Save the image every N minute(s) (N is a number between 1 and 60):Data in the RAM disk will be saved as an image at pre-set intervals. Save changes to the image file in real-time:The image file is automatically saved if any changes are made to the RAM disk. Note: This setting will not take effect until you reload an image or re-create a RAM Disk. If you use IE browser,please read the following steps: First let's set your IE Cache to be stored on your new RAM Disk.Create a folder on your new RAM DISK where you want your Temporary Internet Files to be stored.Creating directories on your new disk is the same as on a normal hard disk. Now click Start - Settings - Control Panel - 'Internet Options', click 'Settings' and then 'Move Folder'.
Browse to the folder you just created on your RAM DISK,move the disk space slider to a new value that is less than your RAM Disk and then hit OK at all the prompts. Internet Explorer will recreate this folder upon every reboot.If you are using other browsers: Speed Up Chrome with Ramdisk Speed Up Firefox with Ramdisk Speed Up Internet Explorer Ramdisk.
RAM Disks can be very useful and if you have the memory available, using system RAM as a disk drive can really speed up certain operations. One common usage is storing the or cached files from your web browser or other software.
Another usage scenario is storing specific programs or data files you use often for faster loading. For example, we’ve talked previously about how by storing some of its files in RAM.There are several applications around that can create RAM Disks for you, some are shareware or commercial products but quite a few are free to use.
Although you might think RAM disks all work at the same speed because they use the same physical RAM, that is not the case. Better coded and optimized RAM disk software really can make a difference in how well the disks perform.Here we look at 13 free programs that can create RAM disks and run a performance test to see how fast each program is when reading from and writing to the RAM disk. The popular is used to run the benchmark. The operating system is Windows 10 64-bit with a PC containing 16GB of 1600Mhz DDR3 memory. Each RAM disk created is 512MB in size and formatted to NTFS, while the CrystalDiskMark test size option to is set to 100MB.
CrystalDiskMark runs each test with 5 passes so a single benchmark gives a good average. The 4K scores test small file performance while Sequential (Seq) scores test the speed of transferring larger files. Depending on your intended use for the RAM disk, one set of scores may be more important than the other. A good score in all tests would be best for general all round good performance.The screenshot above shows a CrystalDiskMark result from a standard 7200RPM hard drive.
The screenshot below is a typical SSD when performance is measured through CrystalDiskMark. You’ll notice the 4K scores are what really sets an SSD apart from a mechanical hard drive.The results for the RAM Disk software will give you an idea of how much faster a RAM disk is. Even the slowest RAM drive software is still faster than a standard SSD. Obviously, the slower your computer and system memory is, the slower your RAM disk will perform in comparison.1.Although you can use the, the ImDisk Toolkit is easier to use. It also includes options to mount floppy, CD-ROM and hard disk image files (ISO, BIN, VFD and etc) as virtual drives. RAM disk size is not limited and there are options to load content from an image file or folder, synchronize at shutdown, enable compression, auto add temporary folders, and allocate memory for the RAM disk dynamically.2.Radeon RAMDisk is a rebranded version of Dataram RAMDisk but it actually has a higher limit on the maximum size of the RAM disk.
For a standard system, the maximum RAM disk size is 4GB, if you have AMD branded memory installed, that limit is increased to 6GB. Higher limits can be purchased separately. Radeon RAMDisk is not just for AMD based systems but also works on Intel and others.3.ROG is an acronym for the “Republic Of Gamers” brand that is used on Asus high-end motherboards and other Asus hardware. RAMDisk is a similarly branded tool but works on all computers and not just ROG branded hardware.
The drive size limit appears to be around 50% of the total amount of RAM you have installed. The Junction tab is useful so you can easily create junction points to map folders to the RAM disk.4.Ultra RAMDisk Lite is a multi-purpose tool that can also create ISO images, create virtual ROM drives, and change system/Internet Explorer/Chrome cache directories.
The RAM disk options allow you to set the default filesystem, use a SCSI or Direct I/O disk, mount as a removable disk, create TEMP folders, and use as a one time disk which removes it on shutdown. One slight annoyance is the buy now nag that pops up when opening the user interface.We used the Direct I/O Disk Type as the program says it’s the faster of the two.5.Miray RAM Drive is definitely the easiest program to use here, but that comes at the expense of features. There are no real features to speak of, you simply click on the tray icon, adjust the slider to set the RAM drive size and press the power button to mount. The maximum RAM drive size is 4GB for 32-bit systems and 8GB for 64-bit. This can be expanded by purchasing a paid version.6.As we mentioned earlier, Dataram RAMDisk and AMD Radeon RAMDisk are in essence the same program. The only major differences are Dataram has a smaller maximum RAM drive size of 1GB, you can select a FAT or unformatted filesystem and there is an option to choose a boot sector type.
The AMD tool has additional options to choose what type of disk to load on startup and which drive letter to assign the RAM drive to. Both periodically popup an ad window.7.Disk Master is a multi-purpose application with some useful features. In addition a RAM disk creation tool, Qiling Disk Master can also create/mount virtual drives, backup and restore the system drive or partitions, create and format partitions, clone/migrate disks, and even create a WinPE PreOS recovery system. The RAM Disk option itself is pretty basic but doesn’t appear to limit disk size. It has options to change the drive letter, save the drive contents and put Temp folders onto the disk.8.OSFMount is designed to be used in conjunction with Passmark’s OSForensics but works equally as well as a standalone product.
The program can also be used to mount virtual disk images to a drive letter, such as ISO, BIN, IMG, VMDK, and VHD. The RAM disk size only appears to be limited by the amount of free RAM you have. Once you have created an empty RAM drive, it has to be manually formatted to be accessible.9. )Gizmo Central is a software frontend for several Gizmo tools, including macro scripting, database analysis, text/hex editor, and a file hasher. Luckily, if you just want the Gizmo Drive RAM disk, these other components can be excluded on install. Once installed, select an empty virtual device and press Create Image. Along with creating a virtual hard disk or an ISO image, you can then setup a new RAM disk.
Size is not limited and you can create up to 10 virtual disks at once.10. (Freeware version)SoftPerfect RAM Disk was originally shareware, then was made freeware in 2012, With the release of version 4 in 2016, it went back to being shareware again. The size of the RAM drive can be as big as the amount of free RAM you have. Multiple drives can be mounted and unmounted from the user interface.
You can select the default filesystem and also supply folders to be auto created once the drive is mounted.The version tested and the download link is for the last free version, 3.4.8, released in October 2016.11.Unlike the Asus RAMDisk utility, ASRock XFast RAM does not work on any computer. Therefore, you will need an ASRock manufactured motherboard to use it. There are switches to automatically send Chrome, Firefox, Opera and IE browser cache files to the drive, as well as setting it up for system temp files, the system page file, WinRAR temp files and even Ready Boost cache space. The RAM Disk space is not artificially limited and can be as big as the amount of free RAM you have.If you try to install this on a non ASRock motherboard, you will get a “driver may not be ready” error.12.Starwind is another nice and simple RAM disk software to use.
Add a device, select a size (limited by free RAM), choose whether to FAT format it and whether to automount. The only other notable options are setting the default RAM disk configuration and changing the skin for the software interface.13.Bond Disc is the only tool not tested in Windows 10 because it’s from 2010 and does not work on any operating system newer than Windows 7. It’s also partly encryption software making the whole program a bit more difficult to use, especially with the slightly confusing user interface. RAM Disk size in Bond Disc is limited to 640MB.Results and SummaryAs we mentioned earlier, the results can be split into two distinct categories, 4K scores and Sequential (Seq) scores. The Q32T1 scores for both sequential and 4K are how well the RAM disk handles multiple file transfer requests at once, so they represent a heavier workload.Bond Disc was the fastest for both sets of 4K scores. The problem is it’s an old and not very user friendly tool focusing more on encryption. The 640MB size limit could also present a problem.
More user-friendly and less restrictive tools that did well with 4K were IMDisk, ROG RAMDisk, Ultra RAMDisk Lite, SoftPerfect RAM Disk, OSFMount and Gizmo Drive.It might come as no surprise the software that did well in the 4K scores also mostly did well in the sequential read and write scores. Ultra RAM Disk Lite and SoftPerfect RAM Disk got the highest sequential scores while Gizmo Drive, IMDisk, and Asus ROG RAMDisk were better when the number of simultaneous file requests was increased with the Q32T1 score.For generally faster across the board performance, IMDisk, Asus ROG RAMDisk, Ultra RAMDisk Lite, OSFMount, Gizmo Drive, and SoftPerfect RAMDisk are all good choices. Bond Disc is very fast but may be incompatible or too restrictive for your requirements.
What RAM disk you prefer may be down to what other features each software offers that helps you decide which is best for you. I’ve downloaded Raxco Ram disk product and it seems that Raxco have bought out SuperSpeed which is in this range of tests.I tested both Raxco (SuperSpeed) and Softperfect RAM disk and Softperfect freeware crushes Raxco on the performance front.Raxco offers a few more features however, which might be worth it for some people.Anvil Storage Utilities RC6:Raxco:Read total = 24996.38Write total = 11708.25Total = 36704.63Softperfect:Read total = 31455.34Write total = 14948.61Total = 46403.94Considering Softperfect is 100% free i don’t see why i should pay $99 for the Raxco software? Although that looks like a very thorough test, judging by the versions of the software used, I believe it’s around 3 years old and so wildly out of date. You can’t place any relevance in those benchmarks because just about all RAMDisks tested have been updated at least once since then and that can make a BIG difference to performance.As to why QSoft Ramdisk isn’t included, we simply can’t and have no intention of testing every single piece of RAMDisk software out there. There’s a fair selection of free and commercial products included already and if one of them needs to be replaced, Qsoft will certainly be considered. Just out of curiosity, I did concurrently benchmark the QSoft and the Dataram ramdisks.System: dual Xeon with 16 GB RAM — Windows 8 Pro – 64 bitB: Qsoft ramdisk – 3072 GB – FAT32E: Dataram – 3072 MB ( because of the 4GB restriction ) – FAT32The benchmarks were started at quasi the same time ( within the time to move and click the two start buttons ).
By this, the benchmarks run concurrently on the disks with the same size and the same filesystem. I presume this the most accurate test one can perform.The result can be found here: dl.free.fr/cwU0mefFI/benchmark3072.jpgIt shows that the QSoft ramdisk is “just” a bit faster in almost all test cases, although, the differences are minimal. What system did you use to test?
On my Phenom II X4 955 with 16GB DDR3 @1333Mhz, my Seq and 512k speeds are about half yours, although I more or less matched the other scores and exceeded your best 4k QD32 Write speed by a large amount (813 MB/s). I tested with DataRAM RAMdisk, RAMdisk Enterprise and Bond Disc. My Maxxmem Preview scores are below, perhaps you could share yours to compare?Copy 10466 MB/sRead 8107 MB/sWrite 6831 MB/sScore 7.47GB/sLatency 66.9 nsOh, I also tried the SoftPerfect RAMdisk and was able to create a 10GB NTFS RAMdisk but whilst copying a folder to it, it said it was unable to continue as the files were corrupt. Checking the RAMdisk showed that that the folder was now inaccessible and non delete-able and so I had to unmount the RAMdisk and re-mount it (now empty) to clear that problem.
Trying again gave the same result so I gave up on that software. Same procedure had already worked fine with RAMdisk Enterprise but that has a lot more options to set. @ doveman: As I said up in the article, these tools appear to be heavily influenced by the way they’re coded which is why there sometimes seems to be big differences between software and also systems. My Maxxmem 1.99 scores are below:Copy 21168 MB/sRead 19418 MB/sWrite 18784 MB/sScore 18.10 GB/sLatency 52.4 nsThis probably confirms the point about software being the limiting factor, as these scores are much higher which comes through in the sequential and 512k scores, but your 4k QD32 score is much faster.Update: DataRAM and Softperfect benchmarks have been updated for versions 4 and 3.3.1 respectively. Ah yes, I see what you mean now. It does seem that the RAMDisk software isn’t taking full advantage of your RAM speeds when it comes to 4k speeds, as your Seq and 512k scores are about double mine in all the tests but your best 4k and 4k QD32 scores are about the same as I got with RAMDisk Enterprise, except for the 4k QD32 write, which I exceeded considerably.My ImDisk scores compare strangely to yours (i.e.
Exceed all your 4k scores considerably) as well as you can see from these screenshots:This is a 10GB NTFS IMDisk:imageshack.us/photo/my-images/16/imdisk10gbntfscdm.png/and this is a 10GB NTFS IMDisk using awealloc:imageshack.us/photo/my-images/407/10gbawealloccdm.png/I did test with CDM x64 though, so perhaps that’s worth you trying to see if it makes any difference. I’ve got a Phenom X4 965 and getting similar scores as you on my G.Skill RAM. I’ve got 16Gb of it running in dual channel mode (it’s stock is 1600mhz but it’s at 1333).I too am somewhat confused by this, changing the speeds of the RAM, increasing the speeds to stock, tightening the timings and increasing the NB frequancy improved the benchmark but not by that much.At stock:Copy: 10149Read: 7924Write: 6621Score: 6.30Latency 72.6 (units are the same as above)I could get the timings to 7-7-7-21-2T on 1333Mhz which had an increase but it was unstable. The highest I got it was 1600Mhz on 8-9-8. I did a pre and post CPU OC and that had some impact, 600Mhz more increased my scores slightly so I am wondering if it is the chip holding it back. I wonder if these benchmarks are actually optimised for AMD systems. Louis!simple:YESsophisticated:if your bios sees 4 gigs and your 32bit OS those 3.2-3.5(???)gigs you can use the rest for ramdisk.
XP creates a pagefile even if not needed, so my estimate is: use 1GB for RamDisk and put page and temp+temporary internet there. I heard you can have your ramdisk saved to a hdd as files or a disk image(even iso) before shutdown or simultaneously when idling. This could even prevent fragmentation buildup issues caused by small cookies and temp.inet.files! And still spare your data usage when mobile or speeding up browser startup when having a bunch of tabs open.I’m even considering somehow setting ramdisk as the default pagefile drive, but setting XP not to use one – XP will still use one, but not the equivalent amount of physical RAM, just around 0.3-0.5 GB, but it’s just guesswork yet, cause I didn’t really bother trying it out yet.I will update as soon as done. Yep, it has happened here also.DataRam hasn’t been that successful all times in my experience either when load and particularly save the image down to disk.
OMG!You ARE GREAT!I’ve been testing Flash Drive sticks using Crystal DiskMark and have found surprising results. Surprised their write speeds are so slow!Second Life is a virtual 3D world you play on line – you can do anything, create anything, meet people, build worlds, play games – all in 3D photo realistic graphics.Pumping all that graphics through high bandwidth to a fast CPU and even faster ATI or NVIDIA card is AMAZING!BUT,The Hard Drive is the slowest part of the whole system. Even with large amounts of GDDR5 graphics RAM, the virtual world viewer must cache data to the hard drive.But now, I can use the RAMDisk from DataRAM,and it is one of the fastest and FREE!THANK YOU!Thanks for testing each one of these RAM Disks, and publishing a great article.This information is not only useful for gaming, but for any computationally intensive process – video processing, graphics rendering, etc.Good Job!