Using a DataRAM RAM Drive to increase the performance of your computer.

A while back I did a review of some RAM Drive programs this is an up date on the DataRAM RAM Drive program.

I bought another 4 Gig of RAM for my desktop, that gives the system 8 gig of memory.

Note:

If you have bought any memory products the price per bit is going up. It maybe the normal up and down swing of the industry but I think there are a couple of more factors.

• China is buying up all the 'rare earth' materials that aren't already committed to someone else
• Manufacturing in the USA has almost came to a standstill and will probably cease to exist
• Japan is hoarding their cache of 'rare earth' materials thus the price is increasing.

I won't tell you to buy memory products now as a hedge on the future but do keep an eye on the prices. My 4 gig upgrade cost me over $120 (had to buy from Ireland - no stock in the USA for my particular DRAM) the first 4 Gig cost me less that $80.

With 8 gig of memory running on an XP / Windows 7 32 Bit OS with Dual Boot both Operating Systems can only utilize 3.25 Gig of physical memory. That leaves me with 4 Gig of unusable memory.

But with a DataRAM RAM Drive I can use that memory and it will help with the performance of the computer.

When I put the memory in I also decided to bump the clock speed of my Core 2 Quad processor to 3.17 GHz.

Troubleshoot, repair, maintain, upgrade & secure...     With this!

Here is what I did:

• I installed the new RAM, 2 at 2 Gig 1066 MHz and removed 2 ea 1 Gig 800 MHz. This additional RAM brings my total RAM to 8 Gig and with a clock speed of 1066.
• When I test the RAM install I am in the BIOS setup so I went to the Advanced section and increased the memory speed from 333MHz to 395MHz, with a Multiplier of 9 (the max my motherboard will allow) and the processor base speed of 2.4 GHz I can effectively get 3.17 GHz from my memory/motherboard/processor.
• Next I have 4 Gig of unusable memory because I run 32 bit Operating Systems. To utilize this unused memory I have a RAM Drive that acts as my Temp drive, that is I have all my programs pointed to the RAM Drive for their temp files. Before I had a 2 Gig Ram Drive, now it is 4 Gig that gives me room to move the Swap or Paging file to the RAM Drive.
• Basically what I am doing is moving the Paging file from a hard drive (slower) to a RAM Drive (100+ times faster) although I can't give the Paging file the recommended physical memory + 1.5 times the physical memory I can give it enough that it improves over all performance very noticeably.

  The image, table, or PDF was removed because it will not display on your device. Check back on a PC...

  
  (Because the file is mostly empty the RAM Drive image will load faster, thus the file never becomes fragmented, making the performance that much better).

The DataRAM RAM Drive program allows you to do two things that the other two programs I reviewed do not:

• Make an image of the RAM Drive once it is loaded
• Have the RAM Drive service run at startup and copy an image to the RAM Drive before the Operating System is fully started.

With this in mind I setup my DataRAM RAM Drive as my temp drive,

• I created the file structure for the temp directory and moved the Cookies directory from the hard drive under my user ID to the RAM Drive also. (This takes some editing of the registry to change the path for Cookies, if you don't know what you are doing leave the registry alone!).
• Then I put the Paging file on the RAM Drive set to the minimum that is the physical memory the Operating System can use.
• Once I restarted the computer I went to the RAM Drive and deleted all the temp files that the OS was not using.
• Then I deleted all the Cookies in the Cookies directory. (This was a minor mistake)
• Next I made an image of the RAM Drive, set it to initialize and load at startup.

Then I restarted my computer, WoW it is a lot faster! Part of the increase in speed is the Overclocking, but the big part is moving the Paging File and Temp directory to the RAM Drive.

Here is my mistake with the Cookies:

• I deleted all the cookies from the normal everyday web sites I use so the next time I opened them up I had to do some settings such as turn off the 'Remember me' or 'Save password' settings on the log on (Never save those passwords, a virus looks at cookies first for passwords and user ID's!)
• So I cleaned out the RAM Drive again, went to the web sites I use on a daily basis, left the cookies as they are and made a new image of the RAM Drive.
• What does this mean? It means my Cookies folder will never fill up with useless junk any more, nor will the Temp folder fill up with junk, and I don't have to worry about clearing the Paging File at shut down.

Remember how fast your computer started and shut down when it was new? Well mine is a little bit faster than that, with the SSD, Overclocking (slightly), and the DataRAM RAM Drive my desktop starts in less than a minute and shuts down in about fifteen seconds.

Now that is an upgrade I can live with!

If you are interested in the DataRAM RAM Drive program it ia at:  h t t p://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk, well worth the money.

Note: For readers the above url (web site address) is not a link, it is plain text, copy and paste into your browser address bar, those that are security conscious the web site is not a secure https site and you may get a warning. I can not add that address to this web site because it would lower my web sites security rating, thus lower my search engine rating. I will however vouch for the web site and the company that runs it, secure and good people.

P.S.

In the help file at the bottom of the article there is an interesting note: Using a RAM Drive for the Temp directory may cause some programs to fail on installation. I haven't experienced that as of yet but if you are using the RAM Drive this way just change the temp file location to a hard drive for the install then put it back on the RAM Drive, simple, fast, effective.