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Chrome Portable in a RamDisk = decadence?
MilesAhead:
I was doing the old Firefox Portable in a RamDisk routine again when I noticed even in a ramdisk FF 37.02 Portable isn't all that snappy. So I deleted that and made one with Version 42.0.2311.90 of Chrome from PortableApps.com.
I made a 1/2 GB FAT32 RamDisk using DiskMaster Free and just dragged and dropped the ChromePortable folder from the HD into it. This technique has the pita that if you want to make any durable changes like setting up forum cookies to auto logon, you have to do it running out of the HD folder. But doing it that way rather than saving the image allows you to just chuck it when rebooting or shutting down.
The other consideration with chrome is limiting the disk cache. I didn't want to make a huge ramdisk so I used these command line switches in the shortcut to limit the cache size to 20MB and locate it on the RamDisk: --disk-cache-dir="r:\cache" --disk-cache-size=20971520
Also I took advantage of the RamDisk feature to locate the system Temp folder on it. Hopefully applications know enough to check available disk space before trying to park giant temp files, like for m2ts muxing. :)
So far it feels very snappy. My main disappointment was I could not figure out how to copy extensions from the installed chrome to the portable. But I don't have that many. I did it the hard way and just installed them into the portable run from the HD.
eleman:
The problem with Firefox is not that it frequently reads and writes to the disk. It almost never does, especially if you disable the cache on the disk.
The problem is it handles a huge amount of memory just to display the pages. The engine is inefficient and it leaks like there's no tomorrow. To be fair, it was even worse.
Anyway, as the working space used by Firefox approaches to 10 figures (in bytes), just occupying that large a space becomes a burden on the CPU. Hence we have the unresponsive Firefox problem.
Moving the application to ramdisk would not reduce its working space, so it would not have any appreciable impact on the responsiveness front.
Chrome is simply more efficient in terms of memory use, so, ramdisk-or-not, it would work faster than a Firefox.
I still use Firefox though, as (i) I'm hooked on the add-ons, and (ii) I'm not inclined to have another piece of software to report everything I do to the US government. I know Chromium is open source, but I don't trust Google period. And yes, I feel hypocritical while typing these on IE. But that's a story for another day.
MilesAhead:
^^ what your analysis neglects is the case where the HD is busy. Often a browser will not get off the dime if the HD is doing something non trivial. That's the main reason for the RamDisk. FF portable with cache set to 0 uses ram. Like about 2 GB on my system. That's where it gets its speed. It seems like with each version increase the speed and responsiveness decreases though. But it's a dog off the HD even when the HD is quiet. If the HD is busy and you like FF it is better to just minimize it to tray if you don't like Ram drives.
Chrome is faster because it launches about 8 instances to do about:blank.
As soon as a page is there it's rendered.
MilesAhead:
I noticed chrome.exe does not really start up all that fast. MxNitro, on the other hand. Snaps open. Unforutunatey it has been imumized against customization. I can't even put my Bookmarks Toolbar as a toolbar.
But I decided to be even more decadent and copy the MxNitro Portable folder to my RamDisk. The thing does fly. But I'm starting to do a lot of typing to open pages. :)
Curt:
-thanks for telling about MxNitro, I had never heard of it before! http://usa.maxthon.com/nitro/
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I know nothing about RAM Disks, but your post made me so far look up http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/what-is-a-ram-disk-and-how-you-can-set-one-up/. At the risk of sounding decadent, my first question is, if you are using a physical or a virtual RAM disk?
:tellme:
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