RAM Disk is a technology where you use your computer’s memory (or some people call it RAM) and make it into a virtual hard disk drive. People do that because the speed of RAM is so much faster for most kinds of storage and files on a RAM disk can be accessed much more quickly. Another factor is RAM are pretty affordable nowadays and most modern computers have at least 2 to 4GB of memory which we’ll never fully utilize. Ever get annoyed on how long it takes to run Adobe Photoshop? Even after using Firefox for a long time, you’ll notice that the best browser starts to crawl. Well if you install and load it in RAM Disk, I strongly believe that the time that takes to startup will definitely cut down by a lot. All you need to do is to install the software on the drive that is created with RAMDisk or if it is a database, set the program to load the database from the RAMDisk.
I have found 12 RAM Disk software with most of them are shareware and only a few that is free. After a little research and testing on the RAM Disk software, I noticed that some performs faster by giving a faster read and write speed even when working on the same memory. I believe how the RAMdisk driver is being coded and optimized makes a difference on the performance of the software.
I will be using CrystalDiskMark, a very popular disk benchmark software to do the test on a clean Windows XP computer with service pack 3 and all latest hotfixes. I have 1GB DDR2 (333MHz) x 3 installed on my desktop computer. As a standard, I will create 500MB on every RAMDisk software if it allows me to. Then I will use the default CrystalDiskMark benchmark settings to test on the RAMdisk space. I’ve tried running the test a few times and the result I get is always different but they are very close. The number that matters the most is the 4K test which is at the third row of the screenshots. Higher is better.
7200RPM hard drive without using RAM Disk.
1. Qsoft RAMDrive Enterprise 5.3.1.11 (Shareware $10 USD)
2. Virtual Hard Drive 2 Pro (Shareware $29.99 USD)
3. Gilisoft RAMDisk 3.2 (Shareware $19.96 USD)
4. VSuite Ramdisk Standard Edition 4.3.4127.1603 (Direct IO) (Shareware $29.95 USD)
5. SuperSpeed RamDisk 10.0.1 (Shareware $39.95 USD)
6. Dataram RAMDisk 3.5.130 (Freeware)
7. VSuite Ramdisk Free Edition 1.16.2127.1603 (SCSI) (Freeware)
8. ImDisk 1.1.6 built 7 (Freeware)
9. Gavotte RRamdisk (Freeware)
10. SoftPerfect RAM Disk 1.0.1 (Free Beta)
11. Power RAMDisk 2.80 (Shareware $9.95 USD)
Note: Can only create FAT and FAT32 drive (NTFS not possible). Blue screen of death crash occur when try to test read and write speed with CrystalDiskMark.
The last two is a failed RAM Disk product and they’re charging money for it! If you want to use RAMDisk software for free, go for Dataram RAMDisk. If you’re willing to buy it, then choose either one from the top 3 because they all have similar results.
