A Game RAM Drive?

Prerequisites:

Before you do anything you need to evaluate your memory usage. That is fairly easy, right click on the Taskbar, select Task Manager, and then open the performance tab. Depending on the version of the OS (I use windows only) you may have to do a little searching for that tab. Older windows versions you would look for "Physical Memory", then the amount "Available", on newer versions the Performance tab click on "More details" then on "Memory" as an example my VM Ware XP OS has 2.77 GB of free memory, my Windows 10 has 59.3 GB of free memory.

Memory for Game RAM Drive

So with the installed memory of 64 GB the OS and VM Ware virtual machine only using 3.7 GB there is a lot left empty for a Game RAM Drive. Now that is not to say all that memory isn't being used from time to time. You should give the OS a buffer of empty memory incase you open something that does use a lot of memory.

The game I tested does use about 3 to 6 GB of memory when operating, the OS is stable at 1.3 GB with out any programs running just the normal background services. So if I want to run a game in that spare memory I need to make sure the OS and any programs loaded at startup have ample RAM or my OS will have problems, from running slow to shutting down unexpectedly.

Setting up a Game RAM Drive

Ok? With the preliminaries out of the way this is what I did:

When my Wife said I could spend 180 USD on my new and improved computer I did not hesitate and had her use her Amazon Prime account to order another 32 GB of Patriot Viper 2666 DDR 4 RAM. With that installed I now have 64 GB of RAM.

Having used DATARam RAM Drive for quite a few years I knew it is a good program, and I knew how to set up a Game RAM Drive; maybe  :(

I setup the game ram drive to occupy 50 GB of memory, this is sufficient enough to put my favorite game and all the add on modification files on and run it from there, and that leaves the OS 12 GB of ram to run.

If you have the DATARam RAM Drive program and use it you will need a license (if you don't already have one) to make your ram drive larger than 1 GB, also if you have the program but haven't installed it yet be aware: that for Windows 10 you need version4.4,0.34 or higher - any older version will not work and may crash your system...

Note: These images are from my "Working" Operating System not the "Games" OS, the ramdrive is the same size.

DATA Ram Drive main page and settings, select unformatted, set the maximum amount of memory you would be using. Once the drive is created the program opens the Disk Management program, from there you will set the partition, drive letter and format. I always set the security at this time, add your user ID with "Full Control". Using the "Advanced" button at the bottom of the Security tab, at the top of the "Advanced Security" page you will see "Owner: System", click on change and use your user ID, if you are copying files to this drive you need to have write permissions, I find that owning the drive easier than answering the question "continue" especially when you have a large game with a lot of files!

When you have your drive formatted and security set you need to save the disk image, check the "Image file" box, is it where you want to store it? Change it or if it is correct, click the "Save Disk Image Now" button. If you need to store the image on a non-system disk see the next image and set the check box for non-system drive first.

Two options here, the "Do not create backup when saving disk image", I have this off because it creates a back up of the image, the image I use is 50 GB, the backup would also be 50 GB.

The second option I use is the "Allow image file to be saved in non-system drives" As I mentioned in this article my system drive does not have the space for a 50 GB file, so I store it on a non-system drive.

The ram drive letter is "E" and the page file is there at 32 GB, the temp file and the page file will always be empty on start up Instead of a page file for my Games Operating System the E:\ drive has the normal system folders and the "Temp" folder with 50 GB of open space.

Once the ram drive is set up and the original drive is made I saved it, because I have three Operating Systems on my 500 GB SSD I moved the image from the system drive to another drive, under the Options tab of the DATARam program is an option to store the drive image on a non-system drive. [50 GB for an image maxes out my Operating System drive(s)].

Testing the Game RAM Drive

I test the game ram drive by doing a restart, when I look for  the game ram drive isn't there... I look at the DATARam program and on the Load/Save tab the check box for the option "Load Disk Image at Startup" was unchecked, I check the box and went to the "File" menu and clicked on the "Save Settings", then on the bottom of the window I clicked the "StartRAMDisk".

A window pops open and tells me the drive is not formatted then the Disk Management window opens. Arggggg, already did this once.... I create the partition, format it, name it, and then when the format is complete I open the properties from the disk manager program. Under  tools tab I select "Scan Disk', the scan disk app says the drive is fine but I click on the second option and scan it any way [old good habits].

Then under the Security tab I add my user id to the "Group or user names:" block. Then I click on the "Advanced" button, on the Advanced page at the top I change the "Owner:" to my ID [to copy files to this drive with out any hindrance from the OS security you need to own this drive other wise you will be clicking continue quite often...], then the two check boxes for "Replace all......" and apply, answer the popup questions "yes". If you want your temporary files folder on this drive now it is the time to make the folder.

Saving the Game RAM Drive

Next close all your apps, then under the Load / Save tab in the DATARam window insure the check box for "Load Disk Image at Startup" is checked. Then if you are using a non-system drive insure the path to the folder where you want you image stored is correct, if not change it now. Next click on the "Save Disk Image Now" button. At the bottom of the window there will be a notice that the image is being saved, it takes my installation about 7 minutes to save the 50 GB file.

Now test your new game ram drive, sometimes DATARam will stop the RAM Drive with out problems, sometimes it errors out. I see this on all my installations regardless of the size. I test by doing a restart.

After the restart I look at the game ram drive, it is all there along with the Temp folder, because I had a 1 GB drive before with the Temp folder I didn't have to go into the environment variables setting to set the temp file path. The folder has over 600 MB of temp files and this is just minutes from startup!

[Note: If you need to change the path of the Temp folder see this page on editing the environment variables]

Load a game on the Game RAM Drive

After about 30 minutes and three restarts the game ram drive is ready to load up with my favorite game: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition!

Because I trash my OS and other programs with experimenting I used my Windows 10 installation named Experimental. The first time I copied all the files from the hard drive where Steam setup Skyrim it did not like the idea and the Steam app said I had to be online to install the program... Hummmm? Good securtiy, eh?

To make this work I had to tell Steam that the old installation was gone and the new installation would be on on E:\  - Game RAM Drive. I renamed the original installation directory to Games-old. Started Steam, clicked on the button for online, singed in and proceed to change the installation path to the E: drive under the folder Games. Oppps-- Steam will only install for the first time to an empty folder, OK. I do a restart and this time only create the folder Games for the Steam installer. Log on, check that the default directory is E:\Games, nope, have to add it in again, then set it. I am ready to download the original  basic setup for Skyrim Special Edition... It fails! Well why? What I learned was the old folder was still the default and it couldn't find it because... I renamed it... I had to clear the cache for Steam and restart it, once again it fails. so I restart the computer, make the Games folder on the Game RAM Drive, start Steam, log on, ect, ect, download starts... It will take approximately 35 minutes to download 10 GB of files on a dual 20 MB DSL connection. (Considering I would have never downloaded any file over 1 GB twenty years ago, not bad.)

File download completed I start the game, if anyone has played this game you know the introduction takes around 12 minutes to get to a point where you can save the game and not have to go through the intro again.

Saving the loaded Game RAM Drive

Once it is where I can do a save to my profile I decide I want to save the data on the ramdrive, I open up the app and click on "Save Disk Image Now" and after 7 minutes or so it is done. Ok, well I want to add more files to the installation but I also want to see what happens after restart...

After restart I look at the Game RAM Drive contents, looks about right so I start the game, the main splash screen comes up and disappears then it shuts down. Something caused it to CTD (Crash To Desktop). Look through the folders for the game files, then I notice that a lot (more like most!) of the file sizes are zero!

I run a chkdks.exe on the game ram drive, a lot of the file indexes are invalid, and so on... it is trashed.

Installing the game again on the Game RAM Drive

Ok, what to do? I have about three hours until my Wife gets home from work and I have been experimenting on this for most of the morning... Ok, I'll format the drive and load it up again however I will make a special copy of those files just incase.

After about an hour the format, save disk, and game is installed on the E:\ drive. I open up my trusty old WinRAR and make an archive of the complete game ram drive directory (folder) on one of my storage drives.

Just to be sure the install is good I start it up let it go through the introduction and get to a point where I can save, exit. Restart...

Bad news -- the file structure on the game ram drive is still trashed, a lot of work for nothing? No I don't think so and well I don't give up that easy...

First I make a couple of images of the file structure and the check disk read out. Then I open a trouble ticket to DATARam support explaining what I am doing and what happened - twice! That was on a Thursday afternoon, late on Friday I receive a email from DATARam support "We are sorry you are having problems and technician will contact you about them"... Monday morning I get an email from a DATARam support person, I explain what was going on and add the images to the email. That was eleven days ago, while I wait I decide to do what I used to do with my 1990's DOS Ramdrive: Archive the files from the ramdrive and then format the drive, create the temp directory again, then save the disk to image.

Change of plan for the Game RAM Drive