Ramdisks

[zazou]

Is anyone here using that technology?

I did a bit of googling today but didn't quite get the feeling I found 'the market' leading product nor is this widely used. I'll be checking out a few candidates. Thinking of setting up a ramdisk for caching, e.g. internet browsers.

Interested in seeing if people use it and what for.

[anonymouse]

Not used RAMDrives for about 20 years, technology has moved on. Hard drives are used just for long term storage now, SSD instead for both operating systems and data. Why not just use a USB flash drive and lets Windoze use that?

[sal]

RAM drives are a bit of a relic. SSDs are fast enough for anything but some enterprise class stuff.

Samsung has a function in their Magician software to allocate part of the RAM as super fast cache for their SSDs, but i don't think you can control what exactly goes there.

[DimPrawn]

RAM drives are a bit of a relic. SSDs are fast enough for anything but some enterprise class stuff.

Samsung has a function in their Magician software to allocate part of the RAM as super fast cache for their SSDs, but i don't think you can control what exactly goes there.

SSD's are not fast enough for data analysis. RAM is 1000x faster than the fastest SSD on the planet.

If you are doing scientific analysis, having the data in RAM is essential. Unless you want to wait weeks for the answer.

[MrMarkyMark]

SSD's are not fast enough for data analysis. RAM is 1000x faster than the fastest SSD on the planet.

If you are doing scientific analysis, having the data in RAM is essential. Unless you want to wait weeks for the answer.

This +1.

A number of friends are now working with this:-

SAP HANA, express edition

[vwdan]

SSD's are not fast enough for data analysis. RAM is 1000x faster than the fastest SSD on the planet.

If you are doing scientific analysis, having the data in RAM is essential. Unless you want to wait weeks for the answer.

Is this really relevant to the discussion, though:

"Thinking of setting up a ramdisk for caching, e.g. internet browsers."

[d000hg]

I'd heard RAM disks were making a bit of a comeback now that it's relatively cheap to get a system with 32Gb+ and you can actually allocate a few gig to a RAM-disk.

[sal]

SSD's are not fast enough for data analysis. RAM is 1000x faster than the fastest SSD on the planet.

If you are doing scientific analysis, having the data in RAM is essential. Unless you want to wait weeks for the answer.

Didn't say SSD is fast enough to replace RAM, just that there is hardly any load that is worth placing on a RAM drive. The kind of load like data analysis is running in the RAM natively without the need for an artificial "disk" drive made of RAM.

[sal]

I'd heard RAM disks were making a bit of a comeback now that it's relatively cheap to get a system with 32Gb+ and you can actually allocate a few gig to a RAM-disk.

The problem with RAM drives is that they are running on volatile memory and all data is lost on power cycling the system making them user unfriendly.

Samsung are trying to make it easy with Rapid Mode making the ram drive portion transparent for the user.

[sal]

Not used RAMDrives for about 20 years, technology has moved on. Hard drives are used just for long term storage now, SSD instead for both operating systems and data. Why not just use a USB flash drive and lets Windoze use that?

This is exactly the opposite of what the OP is looking for.

USB drives are slow as tulip, the majority are slower than HDD, high end models that are actually a mini SSDs are a bit better but can't come closer to a mid-high end SSD.

The function of Windows where it can use USB stick for performance enhancement is actually aimed at low RAM systems to augment the RAM by adding a USB flash drive to act as swap/page file location. It's a gimmick made completely redundant by cheap RAM and SSDs