Computer Hope
Microsoft => Microsoft Windows => Windows Vista and 7 => Topic started by: Anythingwill on November 16, 2007, 02:11:25 PM
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Hello,
Ok, so i don't know much about this, i've just heard random things, but perhaps you can help me.
The other day i heard that you could use a USB flash drive as RAM in windows vista, and then i heard you could partion your hard drive as RAM in Linux. When i heard this i thought it was amazing. How i'm thinking about it is like a RAM stick you install in your motherboard, perhaps that's not actually what it is.
I'm really just looking for some information on the whole thing, and i'm especially wonding if this would be possible on Windows XP.
P.S. For any of the regulars that respond to my posts, i'm sorry i haven't been posting when the problems been solved, and i'm sorry i havn't been giving my thanks. So... Ty!
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What you have heard of is setting up a RAM drive...it basically uses HDD space as temporary storage and doesn't speed things up neccesarily.
Back when MBoard limitations on RAM were smaller and OS swapfile limits were still low this was a viable alternative.
Today however with the price of RAM and the MBoard capacities increased it may be counter-productive.
Have a Read (http://www.google.com/search?q=setting+up+a+ram+drive&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official)
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Actually what Anythingwill is referring to is the ability to use USB flash drives as a form of RAM in Vista. The flash RAM that supports this is supposed to be faster to access then hard drives but still slower than real system RAM. The technique is called Windows ReadyBoost (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/performance.mspx). As far as I can see though it is just a fancy word for a page file on a USB flash drive.
You can do this in XP too altough not as elegantly as in Vista. But since it isn't as fast as real RAM and RAM being dirt cheap at the moment this is rather pointless.
A RAM drive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_disk) is something else entirely though. Here you use RAM to create a temporary partition that is many times faster to access than a partition on a hard drive.
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Gotcha.
I read an article and breakdown on the ReadyBoost feature in Vista when i was still breaking RC2...didn't seem worth pursuing at the time and i'm sure the same still holds true for now.
A Pentium 66 was the last time i screwed around with setting up a Ram drive... :o
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Ok, thanks for the info, that's what i was looking for
Sounds like that pretty much raps it up