Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
In search of ... RAMdisk opinions
f0dder:
I frequently (once or twice a day) do hard reboots, just to save time, and never have a corruption problem. (Granted, sometimes I just do a Firefox reboot, since the 100 windows with some PDFs and plug-ins galore is the main slow-down.) I also occasionally have OS lockups and never have corruption. (I do try to make sure not to have the same files open by two users on the puter, which can be problematic.)-Steven Avery (September 24, 2012, 02:40 PM)
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You're joking, right? Please tell me you're joking.
NTFS is relatively resilient, but doing hard reboots like that is asking for a disaster. You might not be seeing all-out catastrophic filesystem bomb-out, but isn't the worst kind of corruption is the kind you don't discover until it's crept into your backup archives?
Thus I would not find the ramdisk acceptable on my most active data file. That is why I wonder if it is worth the effort for the temp files, where I do not care about losing data.-Steven Avery (September 24, 2012, 02:40 PM)
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In my experience, yes. I wouldn't be running important important data on a ramdisk, at least not without an UPS, but it's fine %TEMP% and firefox profiles - add a backup program works on file change notifications instead of stupid timer intervals, and you're pretty well off for not highly critical data.
barney:
Well,
The concensus - if you can get a bunch of drunks to agree on anything :P - of our discussion was that a RAMdisk for temporary files and another for the swap file was probably the best way to go. Nothing lost in case of a hard shutdown or system crash :'( - assuming, of course, that work was properly saved in process ;).
f0dder:
of our discussion was that a RAMdisk for temporary files and another for the swap file was probably the best way to go.-barney (September 24, 2012, 03:26 PM)
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Using a RAMdisk for swap has one acceptable use case: a system with >4GB RAM running a 32bit version of windows, where windows itself cannot access the >4GB ram. Otherwise, it's plain idiotic - the RAM you're swapping to would have been better spent serving memory requests instead of swap. Better get enough RAM and disable the pagefile altogether.
And in the situation where you have >4GB ram installed in a machine - why the heck aren't you running a 64bit OS then? :-)
40hz:
I frequently (once or twice a day) do hard reboots, just to save time, and never have a corruption problem. (Granted, sometimes I just do a Firefox reboot, since the 100 windows with some PDFs and plug-ins galore is the main slow-down.) I also occasionally have OS lockups and never have corruption. (I do try to make sure not to have the same files open by two users on the puter, which can be problematic.)-Steven Avery (September 24, 2012, 02:40 PM)
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You're joking, right? Please tell me you're joking.
NTFS is relatively resilient, but doing hard reboots like that is asking for a disaster. -f0dder (September 24, 2012, 02:59 PM)
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+1 x 1000! :tellme:
Unless you have a genuine virus or worm running completely amuck, or you see smoke, it's generally not a good idea to do a shutdown to "fix" a problem. Like airliners, the most likely time to experience a catastrophic system failure is on start-up or (to a lesser extent) on shutdown.
You might not be seeing all-out catastrophic filesystem bomb-out, but isn't the worst kind of corruption is the kind you don't discover until it's crept into your backup archives?
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Which you'll usually only discover after you reboot and realize things are no longer working.
P.S. If I had a dollar each time a critical backup (made using standard "enterprise grade" backup software) ended up being corrupted (and sometimes not recoverable) I'd have enough money to take a not overly modest vacation on the Continent.
barney:
And in the situation where you have >4GB ram installed in a machine - why the heck aren't you running a 64bit OS then? :-)
-f0dder (September 24, 2012, 03:32 PM)
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I am :P.
Using a RAMdisk for swap has one acceptable use case: a system with >4GB RAM running a 32bit version of windows, where windows itself cannot access the >4GB ram. Otherwise, it's plain idiotic - the RAM you're swapping to would have been better spent serving memory requests instead of swap. Better get enough RAM and disable the pagefile altogether.
-f0dder (September 24, 2012, 03:32 PM)
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Wrong :down:. Well, presumptive.
I know a bunch of folk still on 32-bit systems, several still on Win98 :huh:, one (1) old geezer still running Win3.1 :o. (They did upgrade hardware, to some extent, just not software.) For these folk, the RAMdisk question can be important. They don't want to upgrade the OS - they're comfortable with what they have and have no desire to lean a new OS - but they do want to maximize wherever possible. These are not the cognoscenti, just average folk who have other things to do than live in our hardware/software world, and they have other priorities than getting the latest, greatest hardware/software. But they do want performance when they're here.
Hence, the RAMdisk question.
On another note, the machine I'm on right now has 6G RAM. Running Win7-64. Intel i7. I use a desktop gadget to watch memory and core usages. Seldom see RAM usage above 60%, never above 75%. So, isn't that 1.5G RAM wasted? It's not being used by system or software. So why not make that a RAMdisk as mentioned previously, thus decreasing writes to HDD or SSD, thus decreasing wear & tear? Prolly not a perceived speed increase, considering the machine in use. And, since temporary files, for the most part, don't matter, nor does the pagefile system, once you reboot, there's no harm, no foul, for a RAMdisk, is there? Am I wrong here? If so, show me.
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