Solved Which option should i use when moving folders to a ramdisk?

smirk · May 11, 2023

I'm wanting to move the following folders to a ramdisk

Program Files
Program Files (x86)
Program Data
Users

But I'm not sure how much ram I should use when configuring the ramdisk and rather or not I should use a symbolic link or a junction link to do so move the folders.

MisterEd · May 12, 2023

smirk said:
I'm wanting to move the following folders to a ramdisk

Program Files
Program Files (x86)
Program Data
Users

But I'm not sure how much ram I should use when configuring the ramdisk and rather or not I should use a symbolic link or a junction link to do so move the folders.

Why would you even want to do this? The contents of these folders would be lost when the computer is turned off or rebooted.

smirk · May 12, 2023

MisterEd said:
Why would you even want to do this? The contents of these folders would be lost when the computer is turned off or rebooted.

I'd be using Dataram Ramdisk which allows you to save the image at shutdown and loads the image at startup. I have the ramdisk setup as a folder instead of a drive also. And I can always make a script that copies the folders that runs at startup as well

idgat · May 12, 2023

Again,

MisterEd said:
Why would you even want to do this?

??

smirk · May 12, 2023

idgat said:
Again,

??

It's simple. I want better responsiveness and ramdisks are faster then m.2. But I don't think I'm gonna get much help. So I'm gonna mark this as solved

BrianInEngland · May 12, 2023

smirk said:
It's simple. I want better responsiveness and ramdisks are faster then m.2. But I don't think I'm gonna get much help. So I'm gonna mark this as solved

Technically you're correct, but the Program folders can be several gigabytes in size, so any performance gain would be lost at shutdown/reboot while the folders are copied to and from the SSD.

It won't work anyway as these are System folders that can't be copied from within a running Windows environment. Those three folders on my system are 26GB so you'd likely need a bigger RAMdisk than your system has physical RAM installed anyway

TairikuOkami · May 12, 2023

smirk said:
But I'm not sure how much ram I should use when configuring the ramdisk

At least the same amount as those folders have. Note that user folder also contains browser's cache.
I do not know about Dataram Ramdisk, ImDisk allows to dynamically allocate as much RAM as needed.

smirk said:
I should use a symbolic link or a junction link to do so move the folders.

I am using symlinks without problems.

BrianInEngland · May 12, 2023

TairikuOkami said:
At least the same amount as those folders have. Note that user folder also contains browser's cache.
I do not know about Dataram Ramdisk, ImDisk allows to dynamically allocate as much RAM as needed.

I am using symlinks without problems.

The problem is that the RAM disk will likely need to be as large as, if not larger, than the installed RAM (unless you have 128GB or more perhaps). Which negates any point in doing it, as Windows will be constantly writing to the SSD's page file anyway. Might as well just skip the step and read/write directly to the SSD.

hdmi · May 12, 2023

You can use junctions to redirect folders (either on the same partition or on a different one and that also may be on a different volume). For individual files, junctions cannot be used so that would require to use symbolic links instead. But keep in mind that the SysMain service already stores your most frequently used programs and apps in RAM to make them load faster, and does so in such a particular way that RAM will not be 'stolen' from any processes that try to allocate more RAM. This is because it only uses the portions of the RAM that would otherwise be left unused so the amount of RAM that is used by it is changed automatically, and 'invisibly', as a result of processes allocating/deallocating certain amounts of RAM space. Put simply, SysMain does not bog the system down, as its only purpose is the opposite of that, to speed things up each time when it's possible to do. The only real downside is that it doesn't put you properly in control of what programs/apps are going to load faster with it. Instead, it just speeds up the load times of your most frequently used programs/apps. So, by putting a specific selection of files/folders on a ramdisk, it can be possible to overcome this particular limitation, and, the files/folders that you choose to put on there do not have to be part of any program or app. So, by going for a ramdisk, you gain more freedom, and you also gain the freedom to spend a lot of time and effort on trying to figure out all sorts of stuff about what files are worth putting on the ramdisk (and WHEN they are...) vs not worth, i.e. in terms of how big is the jump in performance vs the amount of RAM that will be sacrificed of course.

That said, personally, I, use Romex Primo Ramdisk with Dynamic Memory Management (DMM) and Compact mode because I find that it greatly reduces the amount of RAM that will be sacrificed by the ramdisk in question, while still getting serious performance. It is a commercial (paid) software. Here's what I got:

Primo Ramdisk (SCSI, DMM, compacted).png

To get the most from it, I also use Romex PrimoCache, also in addition to Primo Ramdisk. Usually 2GB cache size is already big enough to make PrimoCache really shine. It has a fairly huge impact on the logical relationship between performance and what I earlier said about what files to copy onto the ramdisk and when, and what files to delete from the ramdisk and when. I wrote my own scripts to automate these kinds of tasks that relate to the ramdisk, and have embedded them into a lot of my workflow schemes. Copying of the files is done with the free tool called FastCopy, which is portable and can be run from the command line or batch script.

Besides junctions and symbolic links I also rely heavily on the (also free) Sandboxie-Plus to redirect certain stuff into a few sandboxes some of which are located on the ramdisk. Script can also be used to modify the contents of a sandbox, same thing as when you're not using a sandbox essentially, but takes some time (only just a little) to experiment and learn how Sandboxie-Plus works. Its main intended purpose is software isolation, but Sandboxie-Plus can also be used for easy redirection by filtering some data access operations of the filesystem on Windows so can be quite handy for that also sometimes. (It greatly depends on what exactly you want to achieve, but I find it indispensable TBH.) Either way, if you're going to be working with junctions and/or symbolic links a lot, then IMO be sure to grab the free LinkShellExtension (LSE).

jimbo45 · May 13, 2023

RAM disks can be very suitable for tiny OS'es. But since Windows needs at least 4GB RAM just to run decently -- (although in a VM you can make it work on 2GB), -plus paging area etc it's going to take longer to boot - won't necessarily run any better --especially if you have SSD's, and of course any changes will be lost unless you save the whole kybosh at shutdown. Any glitch in the system then you again will lose data.

It can work for tiny OS'es - often a Linux kernel is held on a RAMDISK as the kernel is not usually changed while the OS is running anyway. The modular way Linux works makes this possible,. Windows is built differently so this approach isn't feasable to implement efficiently.

Those who try a Linux VM might see depending on the distro used a boot message "loading ramdisk" where the kernel is loaded.

Cheers
jimbo