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Setting Up a RAMdisk
July 3, 2008
 
Considering the limitations of the relatively small storage space of the Solid State Drives (SSD) on the Eee, their meager writing performance, and issue of wear of your drive, minimizing the writing to your SSD can be advantageous for improved speed, limited SSD wear, and offer better security. One way to do this is by utilizing a RAMdisk. A RAMdisk essentially sets up a portion of your RAM to act as a virtual hard drive.

Considering Windows XP prefers 512MB minimum RAM to run most applications, I recommend having minimum 1GB of RAM in your Eee (which is standard in the 900 and 901), but *HIGHLY* recommend 2GB to get the most benefit. Not only that, with 2GB RAM, you can disable your Windows pagefile without worry.

Using Gavotte RAMdisk is free and easy. Follow these steps to get set up:

(1) Visit this site and download the file. Link is about half way down (recommend alternative link).
(2) Extract the files to where you'd like it to reside permanently ('C:\Program Files\RAMdisk' for example)
(3) Go to your file where you extracted this program and double click 'ramdisk.exe'
(4) Click the 'Install RAMdisk' button. It will process for a few seconds and say it requires a reboot, don't reboot yet.
(5) You can now set your configurations. Set your disk size - for 2GB RAM recommend 512MB, for 1GB RAM recommend no more than 256MB
(6) Select your Drive Letter - default is R: (for RAMdisk I presume, which I use)
(7) Select "Fixed Media" as your media type. Others will work, but for best compatibility, the "Fixed Media" option is recommended
(8) Click "Apply" and you will get another message that says "Requires Reboot"
(9) Manually Reboot now

Your RAMdisk should now show up as fixed drive as letter 'R:' (or whatever letter you decided to use), and include a folder called "Temp". You should be able to read and write files to it just like any other conventional storage drive. Just remember that anything that is stored on it is deleted when you shut down or reboot your PC.

Your RAMdisk will always be there until you run the 'ramdisk.exe' program again and disable it.

Windows Temporary Files

So what can we do with this RAMdisk now? Primarily act as temporary storage. Several processes or programs in windows make frequent writes to your hard drive. Two of these can be managed through the RAMdisk. These are your Windows temp(orary) files and internet browser cache files. Whenever a program is installed on your hard drive or applications need a temporary location to store files, it defaults to your Windows temp folders. These are located in two locations:
 (1) C:\Documents and Settings\<USERNAME>\Local Settings\Temp
 (2) C:\Windows\Temp

You can revise these locations by:
 (1) Going to your Control Panel
 (2) Open 'System'
 (3) Click on the 'Advanced' Tab
 (4) Click on 'Environment Variables' button
 You will see two sections, one is labeled 'User variables for <username>' and one that is 'System variables'
 (5) Click on 'Temp' under 'User variables' section and click 'Edit'
 (6) This will bring up a new dialog box. Under 'Variable value:' type 'R:\Temp' without quotes (or use whatever drive letter you designated for your RAMdisk)
 (7) Repeat this for the 'Tmp' Variable under 'User variables' and for the 'Temp' and 'Tmp' variables under the 'System variables' section (you may have to scroll down a bit)
 (8) Click 'OK'. The system will hang for a few seconds then you should be done.

Now any Windows temporary files will be written to your RAMdisk. This should reduce wear to your SSD, and improve performance a bit in certain instances. Keep in mind that sometimes a program will require a lot more file space to perform its operations. Some games like to dump as much as 1 GB or more to a temporary file during installation. If this is the case, then set up your TEMP folder to either your C: drive, your alternative SSD drive (8GB or 16GB in your Eee 900 or 901), or to a removeable SD card. But for most operations, the size in your RAMdisk should be adequate.
 

Internet Cache

For your internet cache, I will recommend the procedure for both Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 3. Since the RAMdisk is purged after each reboot, since it is using your volatile RAM, this improves security, erasing your internet cache every time you shoot down or reboot.

Internet Explorer:
 (1) Open an Internet Explorer window
 (2) Click on 'Tools / Internet Options'
 (3) Under the 'Browsing history' heading, click the 'Settings' button
 (4) Change the 'Disk space to use' to whatever you prefer. For 512MB RAMdisk, I use 100MB for this, but it can be anything up to your maximum RAMdisk size. For 256MB, perhaps 50 to 100MB is appropriate. It's up to you. Just remember that if you share the RAMdisk for temporary file writes you'll want enough free space for those as well.
 (5) Click the 'Move folder...' button. This will bring up a dialog box to select your location.
 (6) Choose your RAMdisk drive (i.e. 'R:') and click 'OK'. Existing files in the current location will be transferred to your RAMdisk.
 (7) Click 'OK' in the 'Temporary Internet Files and History Settings' Window
 (8) Click 'OK' under 'Internet Options'

You should now have your Internet Explorer temporary files in your RAMdisk. Keep in mind that all these files are purged when you restart your PC. Cookies are somehow kept.

Firefox:
Firefox is not as straight forward, but not too difficult nevertheless.
 (1) Open a Firefox browser window
 (2) In the URL area type: about:config and press ENTER
 (3) What you are looking for is the preference 'browser.cache.disk.parent_directory'. If it doesn't exist you have to create it. To do this:
  (a) right click on any open white area
  (b) click "New/String" to bring up a dialog box
  (c) type 'browser.cache.disk.parent_directory' (without quotes) in the 'preference name' field. Then click 'OK'
  (d) type 'R:\Temp' in the 'Enter String Value' dialog and click 'OK'
  now a new preference called 'browser.cache.disk.parent_directory' should appear with the value 'R:\Temp' showing.
 (4) Close your browser and reopen
 (5) Go to 'Tools/Options/Advanced'
 (6) You will see the 'Cache' options with the configurable amount of cache size. Set this to whatever you desire. Like with Internet Explorer, 50MB minimum, up to maximum of your RAMdisk size. Just remember that if you share the RAMdisk for temporary file writes you'll want enough free space for those as well.

If you look in your R:\Temp directory you should see Firefox temporary files there.
 

Other Uses

You can use your RAMdisk to store files temporarily during your same Windows session. For example, a temporary location to extract zip files and run a setup program.