RAM Drive on Win98???
I had used a RAM drive quite some time ago (Win 3.1) and have recently come to a situation where I would like to use one again.
Can you do this in Win98? How?
I saw a note in the Win95 forum where the answer was supposedly yes for Win95 and that you needed to create an entry in the config.sys of (for example):
device=C:\windows\randrive
This is roughly what I remember from Win 3.1, but when I tried it on Win98 I didn't get a drive, so the question is "Can it be done and how?". If so, what are the parameters needed and allowed?
Can you do this in Win98? How?
I saw a note in the Win95 forum where the answer was supposedly yes for Win95 and that you needed to create an entry in the config.sys of (for example):
device=C:\windows\randrive
This is roughly what I remember from Win 3.1, but when I tried it on Win98 I didn't get a drive, so the question is "Can it be done and how?". If so, what are the parameters needed and allowed?
here's a program that will do it for you, let you assign the drive letter and how much RAM to use
http://thetechzone.com/downloads/ram_drive.zip
over course, you'll need winzip
www.winzip.com
http://thetechzone.com/downloads/ram_drive.zip
over course, you'll need winzip
www.winzip.com
ASKER
Well, that's half the answer (or perhaps more), but it raises some more questions.
1 - I don't have a config.sys. I can create one, but since I don't have one, my thought would be that nothing is going to read it.
2 - What good will the other items in your config.sys do on my Win98 (which doesn't have DOS, I'm think). For instance, files=10 refers to allowed open filehandles, etc. Do I need to have all these for the ramdrive to work, or is this simply your config.sys which happens to have them?
3 (and last) - what are the allowed parameters for ramdrive.sys now? I would expect /E = extended memory like before and /A = expanded memory. What about the arguments for # of allowed files in RAM drive root directory, etc?
If you can answer these, I'll even boost the points
1 - I don't have a config.sys. I can create one, but since I don't have one, my thought would be that nothing is going to read it.
2 - What good will the other items in your config.sys do on my Win98 (which doesn't have DOS, I'm think). For instance, files=10 refers to allowed open filehandles, etc. Do I need to have all these for the ramdrive to work, or is this simply your config.sys which happens to have them?
3 (and last) - what are the allowed parameters for ramdrive.sys now? I would expect /E = extended memory like before and /A = expanded memory. What about the arguments for # of allowed files in RAM drive root directory, etc?
If you can answer these, I'll even boost the points
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ASKER
Well that's enough information.
I've experimented a bit with this and may just have to toss in the towel. Although the various notes I've read indicate that you "should" be able to create a drive of up to ~32 MB, as soon as I go past ~5,000 MB Win98 fails to fully come up, so apparently, RAM drives are not only poorly supported, they're now pretty much broken. I have 288 MB of RAM in my laptop, and I would like to "donate" 20-30 MB of it to working storage when I'm in Win98. When I'm booted into NT I need all I can get for DBs, etc., so I wouldn't use it there. I will be checking out the pointer from 1cell however.
There are good reasons to use RAM Drives, despite the fact that the the O/S caches. For one thing, they make a very good workarea. For instance, if you have a MSVC project with 20-30 files (sources, includes, etc.) and are in a mode where you need to recompile frequently, RAM drives are very handy, especially if you use the same drive for your TEMP directories. When I go through re-compiles in such a scenario, my speeds are a fraction of what they are when the files are on a hard drive.
Another reason is drives on laptops are notoriously slow. In fact, at one point, we found it was actually faster to use DriveSpace because it was faster to read less bytes from the drive and do the decompression, than it was to read uncompressed data. This was a while ago.
I might play with a RAM drive as a service, or in one of the *.INI files. I'll have to experiment to see if that helps with the lock-ups during startup. The timing or when the drive is created may be the issue.
Anyway, this has been an interesting weekend experiment, but nothing I really need, it was just an idea.
I've experimented a bit with this and may just have to toss in the towel. Although the various notes I've read indicate that you "should" be able to create a drive of up to ~32 MB, as soon as I go past ~5,000 MB Win98 fails to fully come up, so apparently, RAM drives are not only poorly supported, they're now pretty much broken. I have 288 MB of RAM in my laptop, and I would like to "donate" 20-30 MB of it to working storage when I'm in Win98. When I'm booted into NT I need all I can get for DBs, etc., so I wouldn't use it there. I will be checking out the pointer from 1cell however.
There are good reasons to use RAM Drives, despite the fact that the the O/S caches. For one thing, they make a very good workarea. For instance, if you have a MSVC project with 20-30 files (sources, includes, etc.) and are in a mode where you need to recompile frequently, RAM drives are very handy, especially if you use the same drive for your TEMP directories. When I go through re-compiles in such a scenario, my speeds are a fraction of what they are when the files are on a hard drive.
Another reason is drives on laptops are notoriously slow. In fact, at one point, we found it was actually faster to use DriveSpace because it was faster to read less bytes from the drive and do the decompression, than it was to read uncompressed data. This was a while ago.
I might play with a RAM drive as a service, or in one of the *.INI files. I'll have to experiment to see if that helps with the lock-ups during startup. The timing or when the drive is created may be the issue.
Anyway, this has been an interesting weekend experiment, but nothing I really need, it was just an idea.
You may want to try and push it as high in the upper memory area as possible and stay away from the first 64Mb of memory and see what happens.
ASKER
The program XMKDSK.EXE mentioned above works great!
It creates drives very fast, can create huge drives (I'm using 50 MB, but I tried 100 MB just for grins), I can specify the drive letter and it will create from the top of memory if desired.
As to the value of using a RAM Drive, a relatively new book from Oreilly has come out on optimizing Windows that describes some of the reasons for having a RAM Drive. The books actual name claims its for optimizing Windows for games, graphics, & multimedia, but it really doesn't hit those areas specifically at all. It's very good and covers most of the tricks I know, but a few I didn't know of.
It creates drives very fast, can create huge drives (I'm using 50 MB, but I tried 100 MB just for grins), I can specify the drive letter and it will create from the top of memory if desired.
As to the value of using a RAM Drive, a relatively new book from Oreilly has come out on optimizing Windows that describes some of the reasons for having a RAM Drive. The books actual name claims its for optimizing Windows for games, graphics, & multimedia, but it really doesn't hit those areas specifically at all. It's very good and covers most of the tricks I know, but a few I didn't know of.
Thanks for the info, its appreciated!
ASKER
That was a typo:
The program is XMSDSK.EXE - it's a bit hard to get, but worth having.
The program is XMSDSK.EXE - it's a bit hard to get, but worth having.
Thanks!
In your config.sys file
device=himem.sys
files=10 (whatever setting you choose)
buffers=10 (whatever setting you choose)
dos=high,umb
stacks=9,256
devicehigh=ramdrive.sys /E 2048
You'll find the current version of Ramdrive.sys on your Windows 98 Boot Disk.
Dennis