RAM DISK!!! Why not?

altivec_2.0altivec_2.0
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Why doesn't OS X have a ram disk feature. Did the one in OS 9 use a dedicated section of ram (you choose the size) to use for apps. You put the apps in there you want to load. They would load much faster because they were stored in the ram. (Right?) I think apple should implement this into 10.4, and even better the new powermac's have a max of 8GB! Have a 4GB Ram Disk from your installed memory to put games in and other apps like Photohop etc. I'm sure they could prevent the data in the selected size of ram to be stored if the computer was always plugged in, with power running through the system. Having something like this would make everything run really really really FAST!
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 33
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    I think that OS X's powerful memory management eliminates the need for a RAM disk (or the need for allocating any amount of disk space to virtual memory, or the need to allocate a certain amount of RAM to any specific application).
  • Reply 2 of 33
    altivec_2.0altivec_2.0 Posts: 995member
    Quote:

    I think that OS X's powerful memory management eliminates the need for a RAM disk (or the need for allocating any amount of disk space to virtual memory, or the need to allocate a certain amount of RAM to any specific application).



    This isn't adding more ram to a program. It's actually running and storing the program in the ram. Solid state storage! Much faster than loading programs off the HD. Heck the HD won't even have to spin up.
  • Reply 3 of 33
    @homenow@homenow Posts: 998member
    A better solution might be a PCI card that was a "hardware RAM Disk" that could utalize slower, less expensive RAM that dosnt take up system RAM. I dont know how feasable this would be, but if possible then you might be able to have 8-16 PCI 100 slots without taking up valuable system RAM, but still bieng faster than a hard drive.
  • Reply 4 of 33
    havanashavanas Posts: 99member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by @homenow

    A better solution might be a PCI card that was a "hardware RAM Disk" that could utalize slower, less expensive RAM that dosnt take up system RAM. I dont know how feasable this would be, but if possible then you might be able to have 8-16 PCI 100 slots without taking up valuable system RAM, but still bieng faster than a hard drive.





    I remember checking out these guys a few years ago... not sure what they are up to lately: http://www.platypus.net/products/index.asp
  • Reply 5 of 33
    altivec_2.0altivec_2.0 Posts: 995member
    You could have a external thing like that too, but look at the price, and it's for PC only, no mac's.
  • Reply 6 of 33
    ast3r3xast3r3x Posts: 5,012member
    I could swear there is a way to do a ram disk. Of course I'm not sure how, and it's through the terminal. I recall a freeware utility to make a backup/restore disk talking about it.



    Anyways, someone get the great Brad in here...he should know
  • Reply 7 of 33
    dglowdglow Posts: 147member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by @homenow

    A better solution might be a PCI card that was a "hardware RAM Disk" that could utalize slower, less expensive RAM that dosnt take up system RAM. I dont know how feasable this would be, but if possible then you might be able to have 8-16 PCI 100 slots without taking up valuable system RAM, but still bieng faster than a hard drive.



    Here's a research file system that makes use of solid state storage: http://lasr.cs.ucla.edu/conquest/.



    I like the idea of your file system abstracting diverse storage mechanisms. (Isn't this what Panther's iDisk promises to do?). In the case of Conquest, the goal is speed: small and frequently-accessed files are stored in persistent RAM, while large files remain in slower, magnetic storage.



    This would be more in line with Apple's way of doing things, IMHO. Why expose an additional concept to users (a separate 'RAM disk') when you can make the existing concept faster using solid state tech and a bit of software?
  • Reply 8 of 33
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Actually Luca it's even more important in OS X than in OS 9 because OS X MAKES you use the hard drive for RAM, you can't turn Virtual Memory off. That's why I was looking at Turbomem in this thread, to do that among other things.



    http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...threadid=29576



    Ast3r3x I think I remember seeing an app or hack that makes a RAMdisk too. RAMbunctious? I think I actually have it I'll try it later.
  • Reply 9 of 33
    thunderpoitthunderpoit Posts: 709member
    what i loved about the ram disk was being able to boot off of one. when i was on my umax c500, my hd died on me, and while i was waiting for the umax guy to come and replace it under warranty, i used the 80 megs of ram i had in there as the startup disk. i had a barebones os and aol on a 40 meg ramdisk i believe. was very nifty.
  • Reply 9 of 33
    muahmuah Posts: 165member
    <IIRC> I used to make a copy of my system folder in the old 7.5.x days. You could make the system run from it, but I forget how exactly .... I think you had to create the ram disk, copy the system to it, change boot disk to ram disk, and restart. somehow it kept the files in ram as long as you did a restart but if you did a shutdown you were f'ed and then you had to start with the cd to change the boot disk back.



    It was wicked fast, but you didn't have much room left to run apps after you use a lot of ram for the disk. I think I got the system down to about 60MB and then had 68MB left for programs. That was back when we would scour the internet for a dealer that would sell us 16MB of ram for $100 + shipping. </IIRC>
  • Reply 11 of 33
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    I used a RAM disk for Quake 3 on my Beige G3. Maps and stuff load faster and if I'm lucky, I can frag someone. Never tried to install a system folder on a RAM disk though. I have the space... I'll try some day.
  • Reply 12 of 33
    phobosphobos Posts: 29member
    Ram disk isn't that good. On the 9 days I was so paranoid about speed and was trying to squeeze every ounce of speed on my machine. I tried installing programs on the ram disk but to be honest there wasn't any substantial speed increase. We are talking about 2 seconds gain and times like that. Using it as cache for the explorer also didn't improve things so much contrary to everybody on the net saying so. I constantly timed it and didn't found a great speed increase. Back in the times of OS7 and the amiga days (yes the amiga had also ram disk) things like that could improve your computing experience but now with all those fast hard disks the speed difference wouldn't show. Systems like the platypus could really help but they are too expensive.



    2 years before I have seen a card that was installed on a PC that uses ram to storage programs and stuff like that. The driver was buggy so you could easily get data lost. it was extremely expensive( for 512 MB you needed 2000-2500pounds or something close to that) and the most excellent thing of all you had to constantly feed it with electricity cause if you didn't you're data would be lost... So in case of a black out or an instant power failure everything would be lost. And they promoted it as an alternative hard disk. Watch your programs load at lightning fast speeds and stuff like that. Whats the purpose of having fast load times and losing all this time gained by reinstalling your programs. But it was reaaaaallyt reaaaly fast.



    The only use I could find was having it as a scratch disk for photoshop. But paying 2000pounds for a 512MB scratch disk is really awful...
  • Reply 13 of 33
    henriokhenriok Posts: 537member
    A friend of mine read the man-page fot the hdid tool in Panther:

    A small shell script to create and mount a ram disk:

    Code:


    #!/bin/sh



    NUMSECTORS=128000

    mydev=`hdid -nomount ram://$NUMSECTORS`

    newfs_hfs $mydev

    mkdir /tmp/mymount

    mount -t hfs $mydev /tmp/mymount



  • Reply 14 of 33
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    Moving to the OS X forum.



    Incidentally, the reason it's argued that RAM disks are beside the point in OS X is that OS X doesn't just write unused RAM out to the hard drive, it uses the RAM to cache files from the hard drive, too. Any file or application that was used recently will hang around in RAM as long as possible. This is why applications tend to launch much faster after the first time.



    RAM disks were necessary in OS 9 because the virtual memory system sucked.
  • Reply 15 of 33
    leonisleonis Posts: 3,427member
    I would love to see how fast apps would launch from RAM disk on a G5
  • Reply 16 of 33
    ast3r3xast3r3x Posts: 5,012member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Leonis

    I would love to see how fast apps would launch from RAM disk on a G5



    So fast you'd be saying "didn't that app used to have splash screen?"
  • Reply 17 of 33
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Er... no?



    See, like Amorph pointed out, files are already mapped to memory much of the time. And VM is paged out to disk much of the time.



    So... you load the app the first time. Great. It's now mapped into memory. (Ie, it's already essentially in a 'RAM disk'.) This is why apps tend to launch much faster after the first time.



    But... assume you have control over this procedure, and you decide that this is *so* great you allocate a couple Gigs to this 'RAM disk' on your 512MB system. Where does the RAM go? *TO YOUR DISK*. So to save time over reading from the disk, you're... reading from the disk. Lovely.





    The benefits of a RAM disk under MacOS X's virtual memory are really really small for 99.9% of the users out there. Could you come up with schemes where it would be of help? Sure. I can also come up with schemes where carrier pigeons are the best technology to use, but they're pretty rare as well.
  • Reply 18 of 33
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Kickaha

    assume you have control over this procedure, and you decide that this is *so* great you allocate a couple Gigs to this 'RAM disk' on your 512MB system. Where does the RAM go? *TO YOUR DISK*. So to save time over reading from the disk, you're... reading from the disk. Lovely.



    In OS 9, you can't create a ram disk larger than the amount of ram in your system without turning on virtual memory. Only then you would defeat the purpose of having a ram disk. BTW, I tried and can't boot off a ram disk. Bummer. \
  • Reply 19 of 33
    airslufairsluf Posts: 1,861member
    Kickaha and Amorph couldn't moderate themselves out of a paper bag. Abdicate responsibility and succumb to idiocy. Two years of letting a member make personal attacks against others, then stepping aside when someone won't put up with it. Not only that but go ahead and shut down my posting priviledges but not the one making the attacks. Not even the common decency to abide by their warning (afer three days of absorbing personal attacks with no mods in sight), just shut my posting down and then say it might happen later if a certian line is crossed. Bullshit flag is flying, I won't abide by lying and coddling of liars who go off-site, create accounts differing in a single letter from my handle with the express purpose to decieve and then claim here that I did it. Everyone be warned, kim kap sol is a lying, deceitful poster.



    Now I guess they should have banned me rather than just shut off posting priviledges, because kickaha and Amorph definitely aren't going to like being called to task when they thought they had it all ignored *cough* *cough* I mean under control. Just a couple o' tools.



    Don't worry, as soon as my work resetting my posts is done I'll disappear forever.
  • Reply 20 of 33
    airslufairsluf Posts: 1,861member
    Kickaha and Amorph couldn't moderate themselves out of a paper bag. Abdicate responsibility and succumb to idiocy. Two years of letting a member make personal attacks against others, then stepping aside when someone won't put up with it. Not only that but go ahead and shut down my posting priviledges but not the one making the attacks. Not even the common decency to abide by their warning (afer three days of absorbing personal attacks with no mods in sight), just shut my posting down and then say it might happen later if a certian line is crossed. Bullshit flag is flying, I won't abide by lying and coddling of liars who go off-site, create accounts differing in a single letter from my handle with the express purpose to decieve and then claim here that I did it. Everyone be warned, kim kap sol is a lying, deceitful poster.



    Now I guess they should have banned me rather than just shut off posting priviledges, because kickaha and Amorph definitely aren't going to like being called to task when they thought they had it all ignored *cough* *cough* I mean under control. Just a couple o' tools.



    Don't worry, as soon as my work resetting my posts is done I'll disappear forever.
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