NT4, W2k, etc., frequently churn the Hard Drive even though you may have more than adequate memory for all running applications, and the operating system.

A Ram Disk is a drive created in memory. Applications, and data may be copied to this drive, or temporary files directed to it, to greatly improve performance, derived from bypassing slow disk hardware.

A Ram Disk size may be arbitrary, but is rounded up to the next larger multiple of the allocation unit as determined by the vendor and the size of the drive.

A HD partition mirrored in ram, with a write through to the HD is a safer alternative for data when combined with an UPS. Note, the whole partition must fit in ram.

Price for Ram Disk software ranges from free to many thousands of dollars for multi-processor.

Until recently, I wasn't aware of ram disk software for NT.

Does this apply (and the software works with) Win2000?

According to their web page. They have different software for each platform, i.e. NT4 Workstation, NT4 Server, NT4 Advanced Server, Win2k Workstation, Win2k Server, etc,.

---

Excerpt from: Superspeed Software Inc. marketing slime.

Ram Disk

Superspeed's Ram Disk software offers the fastest solution for reads and writes. Ram Disk creates a virtual disk drive to store files in non-swapable physical memory. The files stored in Ramdisk is not automatically saved to your hard disk drive. At this time it is available for Windows NT only, on Intel/AMD and on Compaq Alpha systems. Ramdisk can improve system performance by factors of up to 30x.

Superspeed

Superspeed gives you two products in one package. The Ramdisk product http://www.superspeed.com/allproducts.html and the Superspeed in memory mirror of a physical drive partition, for extra data protection. You can use one or the other or both of these products. It is available on Windows NT and Windows 2000. Superspeed can improve system performance by factors of up to 30x.

SuperCache

Supercache software stores the most frequently used data in physical ram. Use this solution if the size of the files you want to store in memory are larger than your available physical ram. Supercache improves system performance by factors up to 30x.

Available for Nt4.0 Workstation, Server, Enterprise, and the Windows 2000 versions. Working three week trial demos available.

http://www.superspeed.com/index.html

$100 to $3000

---

(sold to Cenatek) A much less expensive source of Ram Disk software is available called Ram Disk... http://www.cenatek.com/product_ramdisk.cfm Note that the feature set is somewhat different than the SuperSpeed product. $49 to $69

---

Fast disk in RAM memory for Windows 2000 and Windows XP
http://www.winsoft.sk/ramdisk.htm $35

---

Free Ram Disk is available...
Environment: Windows 2000 / Windows XP / Windows Server 2003 / Windows PE

http://users.compaqnet.be/cn021945/RAMDisk/RAMDisk.htm

---

Contributors: Scott Finegan

---

Category Windows OS