Create a Ram Disk in Windows XP/2000 to speed up graphics creation/Internet access

Published on September 9, 2003 By IPlural In WinCustomize Talk

I ran across this at one of the Tech sites I visit and thought it would be some use to people here for speeding up graphics creation and such.

Actually purchasing a 3rd party Ram Disk application would help more because of expanded size, but this is free and it will make a difference in graphics creation used as the first swap disk. It will also help those that just want to put their Internet CACHE on it so that IE finds info at ram speeds instead of disk read speed or conversly writes also.

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TO CREATE A RAM DRIVE ON WINDOWS XP/2000

Download this: http://download.microsoft.com/download/win2000ddk/sample01/1/NT5/EN-US/Ramdisk.exe

Extract it. (Note the location of which you extracted the files)

Go to Control Panel -> Add Hardware -> Choose From a List -> Other Devices -> Have Disk.
The disk, is the location of which you extracted the files

*Windows XP does not have Certifications for this.

Your RAM drive is installed, however you will only get 1MB on it.

*To Adjust RAMDRIVE SIZE:

Start Regedit in your :\windows\regedit

Go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Ramdisk\Parameters

"DriveLetter" is set to Z: *You may change this.

Change "DiskSize" to 1f00000

This should give you about 30MB.

NOTE:
If you want a larger RAM-drive, you will need to buy it from here.
http://www.cenatek.com/product_ramdisk.cfm

Glad to finally give a conclusion to the question BTW, this is pretested, it's working on my system right now.

Little tip, you can change the location of your cache files for Internet Explorer. If they go to the RAM Drive, it will help process web pages faster, and all you have to do is shut down the computer to clear the cache.

Comments (Page 1)

IPlural

on Sep 09, 2003

just a note, I went and downloaded and installed the Cenatek Ramdisk XP and will purchase it after this post. It has really sped up Photoshop on my laptop, T-22, 40 gig drive, 512 meg ram.

It will take a little tweaking I am sure, but once the correct setup is configured and the image of it save, it will auto load on bootup and be seen as a 32bit formatted Hardisk which is 100megs.

I know for a fact that Photoshop swpas to disk no matter how large the CACHE in ram you set for the program, it is hard code and the only way around it is to swap to a Ram disk as disk one for swapping, then the next cleanest/fastest drive(s) in the order you feel is best.

Just something some might want to try out...

The 30 meg limit that comes with the free verizon that Microsoft provides is way smaller than the 4 gig ramdisk you can setup with the program for those who want to shell out the money.

Maybe Stardock (hint hint) could actually create something like this to extend the NT flavors of Windows. ME and below come ready for Ramdisk included with the OS.

anyway... off to never never land with me

crissy14

on Sep 09, 2003

IPlural
Thanks for the tip. Im trying out the free ramdrive now. Ill let you know what I think of it.

I.R. Brainiac

on Sep 09, 2003

This might be worth checking into.Thanks IP!

IPlural

on Sep 09, 2003

crissy, i.r I hope it does help, seems to have made a big difference here so far.

I went to Borders and picked up a couple of mags from the UK I look for every month. Left the laptop running with PS loaded and just got back. The system isn't laging a bit and PS is still reacting very fast, which is a huge change for my system. It would always chug along after not being touched for a couple of hours because it would swap PS out of memory and have to reload. With the swap disk it swaps to memory and *blink* reloads extreamly fast.

Dreamdesign3d

on Sep 09, 2003

Little tip, you can change the location of your cache files for Internet Explorer. If they go to the RAM Drive, it will help process web pages faster, and all you have to do is shut down the computer to clear the cache.

I guess I'm not as savy as you how would I do this.

crissy14

on Sep 09, 2003

Dreamdesign3d

My guess on how to change the location of the cache files would be: Go to internet options and on the general tab under temp internet files click on settings and then move folder. Move the folder to "z" (ramdisk)

IPlural

on Sep 09, 2003

crissy, yep, Internet Options and change the location of your cached files...

Koasati

on Sep 10, 2003

Thanx IP....... PSP 8 is zipping right along now!

IPlural

on Sep 10, 2003

Koa

good deal !

John Chan

on Nov 15, 2003

hey! this really works! my internet is so much faster now! ok - i have 256 meg of ram, and now i installed the Z drive. does that mean i have only 226 mb ram left?

what if i view more than 30mb in internet files? will my system crash? this is because i just cleaned the cache and moved the temporary file folder to the Z drive and in 3 minutes of browsing, i've already used 2mb of the 30 already! so what happens if i browse the internet for like 3 hours? i'd be sure to go over the 30mb limit. if so, does the system automatically clear some memory for the new temporary files? or will the system hang?

thx for the ramdisk idea! my internet is now twice as fast

kongit

on Nov 15, 2003

the only problem I had with it was if i put the internet
files onto it I could only download files smaller then the randisk size.

joetheblow

on Nov 15, 2003

Is this the same thing as setting up multiple drives on your computer? Like a swap drive?

Tech TV showed a program called Partition Magic and it is suppossed to do this I guess.

Am I right?

digital_trucker

on Nov 15, 2003

Ok, now that it's installed, how do I go about configuring it to be the first swap disk?

kongit

on Nov 16, 2003

joetheblow: it takes part of your ram and creates a drive from it. it doesn't affect your actual hard drive unless you save the image of the disk so it doesn't delete the contents of the ramdisk when you shutdown

joetheblow

on Nov 16, 2003

ok, now I am officially lost.

The program create more RAM space where?
We are talking about random access memeory right?

Doesn't it have to write to the hard drive in order to create the new swap drive?

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