Free Ramdisk for Windows Vista, XP, 2000 and 2003 Server
Ramdisk or RAM-Disk is a virtual hard drive based on software abstraction that treats a segment of random access memory (RAM) as secondary storage which is similar to hard disks, except with advantage that ramdisk is a lot faster and access time is greatly improved. As there is no mechanical moving parts involved, there won’t be question of wear and tear too. Ramdisk has one obvious downside, that it’s volatile and not solid state. Contents in Ramdisk is stored in computer RAM, which will be lost when the power of computer is switched off.
With these benefits and limit, ramdisk can be used to store frequently accessed yet less important temporary data to speed up the system performance, such as swap space for virtual memory, temporary files used for programs such as Internet Explorer, BT client, P2P eMule, compression utility, translation software and etc, frequently accessed data from a database or used to hold uncompressed programs for short periods. From privacy point of view, Ramdisk is also a working drive for decrypted version of encrypted document, as all trace of the data will be wiped and deleted once power off.
There are plenty of Ramdisk driver and software available, such as RamDisk9xME, RAMDiskXP, RAMDiskSE and RAMDiskVE from Cenatek, RamDisk and RamDisk Plus from SuperSpeed, RAMDisk Enterprise Lite and Full version plus 64 MB limited free RAMDiskbased on Microsoft Ramdisk below from QSoft, and Ramdisk.sys driver for Windows 2000 from Microsoft published under KB257405. However, most of these Ramdisk drivers either is not free, or limit in its functionality especially on the size on RAM-disk. Some not even support Windows Vista.
The following freeware RRamdisk.sys, originally written by Gavotte based on Microsoft’s Ramdisk.sys, and later being added a GUI interface by lyh728 is not only free to use, it also stable, doesn’t have size limitation, supports popular FAT16，FAT32, NTFS filesystems, and supports Windows 2000 operating system and above including Vista.
Download Gavotte Ramdisk with GUI (ramdisk.zip).
Alternative download link.
To use Ramdisk, the most important requirement is that the system has a lot of memory, much a lot than the size of Ramdisk that you intends to create. It works on system with minimum 256 MB RAM, where you’re recommended not to set Ramdisk with size more than 64 MB.
Installation and setup of Ramdisk is pretty simple. Unpack the zip archive to a folder, and run ramdisk.exe. In Windows Vista, you need to right click on it and select “Run as Administrator”, if not you will get a Failed error message. Click on Install Ramdisk to install RRamdisk.sys driver. Answer Yes or Allow if prompted with driver not signed with valid digital signature or can’t verify the publisher of this driver software warning message. Once Ramdisk is installed, all buttons that previously grayed out inactive are now activated.
Now you can set the disk size in Bytes, configure the drive letter for the Ramdisk. You can also specify which media type is the drive - RAM Drive, Fixed Media or Removable Media (for simulating a floppy drive). The default choice, Fixed Media indicates that the Ramdisk is simulating a hard disk drive should work in most case. Click on OK when done with configuration. Note that if you modify the settings of the Ramdisk during the time when system process is accessing the Ramdisk, you will require to reboot the system. Caveat is that, if you put IE Temporary Internet files into the Ramdisk, you will always need to restart computer even though you’re not running IE.
A additional drive, the Ramdisk with default drive letter R: (assuming you’re not changing it) will be created, and immediately accessible for usage.
Other buttons in the Ramdisk GUI are pretty obvious in usage. Use “Remove Ramdisk” to uninstall Ramdisk, or more specifically RRamdisk.sys driver from the system. Save Image… and Load Image… allows users to save or open an image file for the whole contents of Ramdisk, useful if you want to store data in Ramdisk in unaltered state to be open up later.
Ramdisk.exe accepts a image file as its argument so that the image file can be loaded automatically into the Ramdisk from command line. Potential usage include adding of “ramdisk imgfilename” to system boot up script such as autoexec.bat to load the data into memory disk.
There are more customization and other potential usage for Gavotte Ramdisk not included in the GUI. However, you need to manually edit the registry. These additional functions are maintained by addswap.exe and rdutil.exe which explained pretty well by the Readme (included in Page 2). In most case, you won’t need to come to this extent.
Pages: 1 2
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Entries (RSS)
June 5th, 2007 23:56
Man, I would really like to thank you for putting Gavotte’s work here. I have been finding a solution like this for the past 5 hours trying out Google-d Win 2K solutions and trial softwares, and most of the time I spent were on Googling and removing them (one almost killed my system). Once again, a big thanks - and I hope you can convey that to Gavotte himself too.
August 22nd, 2007 07:32
Gavotte! Excellent job!
Your Rramdisk works very fine. It is even suitable to put Windows swapfile on it (what I’ve done).
Thank you.
Robert
August 28th, 2007 02:07
Does not work in Vista 64-bit
September 20th, 2007 00:04
It would be nice to see a vista 64-bit version of this.
September 20th, 2007 10:59
Anyone encountered this problem? After creating the RAM disk, I restarted my pc and windows reported that the disk might be corrupted or using a format tat is not compatible with windows. Anyway i am using windows XP.
September 21st, 2007 14:25
Did you test memory with Memtest?
September 23rd, 2007 18:50
[...] an image file into RAM either after starting or on boot up through an autoexec.bat argument. More configuration choices including registry editing are available [...]
September 24th, 2007 10:44
Robert, I did not test the memory with Memtest. what is the purpose of Memtest?
September 24th, 2007 11:37
As the name says
http://www.memtest.org
http://www.memtest86.com
Using Google is recommended behaviour.
September 24th, 2007 18:20
i already use the memtest.. no errors occured.. hmmm any extra configuration needed after creating the RAM drive? My RAM drive works when it is first created. Once I restarted my pc, windows report that the disk might be corrupted when i tried to aaccess the ram drive
September 25th, 2007 03:21
Run ramdisk.exe.
Set it as “Fixed Media”. What size did you set?
In my case I set 512MB (I have plenty of RAM) and letter “Z”.
Try to run Memtest again with the following configuration:
At the very beginning of the test press C (config box will appear), then 2 then 3 then 3 and again 3. You will force thorough test of all memory.
Run the test for the whole night. In the morning you will have results.
September 25th, 2007 09:23
It worked when I set it as “Fixed Media”. Previously it did not work because I set it as “RAM Drive”. hmmm what is the difference between these two types?
October 3rd, 2007 06:39
First, sorry for the delay. I’ve been out of my home.
Difference is only in bit responsible for media identification.
Some programs “don’t like” virtual disks but they look only at media identifier. If you set the identifier as fixed drive everything become O.K.
Luckily you solved the problem yourself.
Good luck and greetings from Poland
October 9th, 2007 09:39
okie..thanx a lot robert..appreciate your help
October 9th, 2007 10:10
is there any way to load the image to the ram disk without using the GUI provided?
October 14th, 2007 05:28
Hi mr. Gavotte, I like to compile the driver myself, would that be possible? I use VC Express and have 3790.1830 SDK and tried the Win2000 example from DDK, I asume you used the example to build your version of ramdisk.sys, can you make a little master-class for us to get some insight in the techniques used?
thx for the good work and grtz from Holland
December 12th, 2007 08:24
[...] RAMDisk Guide I found a better, faster, and more compatable RAMdisk here, Free Ramdisk for Windows Vista, XP, 2000 and 2003 Server
January 7th, 2008 18:05
Hmm..i have problem to remove ramdisk. It would return on next reboot. Any ideas..?
January 12th, 2008 16:20
on the other hand i think run as admin would help..
January 30th, 2008 16:51
I have 4 gig of Ram on my new XP box. I made a 750 MB Swapfile on my new virtual drive. I opened the entiire MS Office suite and 13 other apps along with 2 major resource hogging games without a hitch. I then rebooted and the drive held it’s formatting. A million thanks!!
February 20th, 2008 03:53
“Ramdisk.exe accepts a image file as its argument so that the image file can be loaded automatically into the Ramdisk from command line. Potential usage include adding of “ramdisk imgfilename” to system boot up script such as autoexec.bat to load the data into memory disk.”
I would love to do this. However, I read the instructions and could not understand them. Can someone please explain the instructions to me in another way. Thanks
February 25th, 2008 06:41
This program fails to install on my XP Pro 64 bits machine. Any ideas why? Thanks guys.B.
February 27th, 2008 14:45
Dear Robert, this program failed to run in my machine running Window Vista Business 32 bit. I attempted a few setting of xxMb to no avail but returned with an error ‘blue screen’ message and rebooted. I have to run in Window safe mood every time to install the program. Any ideas what’s wrong? and how to overcome? Thank you.
February 27th, 2008 14:47
Sorry, for typing error, it was ‘uninstalled’ in Window safe mode.
February 27th, 2008 15:34
no
February 28th, 2008 03:35
Dear Chang,
I don’t know the behaviour of Rramdisk under Win Vista. I still use Win2000. In my oppinion this is the most stable one among all the Windows family. Not all what is newest is always the best.
March 1st, 2008 04:03
The ramdisk driver has an error. Setting the ramdisk media type to ramdisk is missing a component for proper initialization (the other file types work well). Another drive that has removable media is required to load up required drivers for this ramdisk - without the removable media the ramdisk is RAW. As soon as the removable media is inserted the Ramdisk is usable.
This is most likely an oversight as that the writer having this dependent component loaded up in the background didn’t realize it was dependent. Systems without this component do not work. There is a newer release as well 01.01.2008 which allows for >=4GB ramdisks (the error is still apparent within this new release)
March 1st, 2008 04:05
05.23.2007 version and greater allows for x64 support
March 1st, 2008 04:58
found the reason why it fails
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/257405
Windows XP Update:
Installing the Ramdisk sample driver in a NTFS only machine might make it unusable. To resolve this problem make the following change:
While you call the IoCreateDevice function (RamdiskAddDevice function in pnp.c), change the device type from FILE_DEVICE_VIRTUAL_DISK to FILE_DEVICE_DISK and recompile the driver. After you install the driver, restart the system in order to access the Ramdisk through Explorer.
Someone please inform Gavotte and have a fix made. Thank you
March 6th, 2008 03:16
Just set up a 256Mb ramdrive using this. Perfect. Wish it was opensourced tho…
March 6th, 2008 06:05
dr Mark,
What do you mean by 64 bits version support ?
The download link on that page is not the latest version?
Thank you.
>> dr mark
>> March 1st, 2008 04:05
>> 28
>> 05.23.2007 version and greater allows for x64 support
March 21st, 2008 13:07
Tried installing under xp64, clicking on the “Install Ramdisk” button gave me a “failed” dialog box.
ramdisk.exe is dated 2/14/2004
rramdisk.sys is dated 12/9/2003
readfirst is dated 5/27/2007
April 7th, 2008 22:31
[...] http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/05/27/free-ramdisk-for-windows-vista-xp-2000-and-2003-server/ ย้าย temp เลือก control panel /system/advanced แล้วเลือก [...]
April 11th, 2008 15:12
[...] the memory to 2GB is recommended and besides, you can create a RAMdisk for more working space using Gavotte’s free ramdisk [...]
April 18th, 2008 20:43
Good job writing the article!
See the a newer version here:
http://www.badongo.com/file/7201826
ChangeLog:
12.09.2003 fix SMP/HT compatibility
11.26.2003 fix re-format problem & some typo
11.25.2003 merge rdpack and rdj to rdutil
11.24.2003 add DiskSizeK registry, more compatible w/ antivirus software
05.23.2007 x64 support
01.01.2008 support >=4G ram under 32bit windows (UsePAE=1)
May 4th, 2008 21:06
I am unable to load a previous saved image from a command line…
using: ramdisk tempimage I have this error:
error: MFMT: Open R: failed 2
If I load the image from the GUI it is loaded rigth…
Where is the trouble?
Thanks for the answers.
May 13th, 2008 04:53
[...] реализовать задуманное. Итак, берем реализацию rramdisk, про которую сам автор говорит: There are plenty of Ramdisk driver and [...]
May 22nd, 2008 22:20
Hello,
Is it possible to run this util to put the whole swap file on the ramdrive?
I now have Vista x64 with 4G ram and the 8G ram is on its way. When I look at the working of the current ram and vmm (swap) it only loads like 1.4G in ram and still continues to swap. Now, I’ve read that it is no good to disable all swaps, but hey, I will have like 6.6G not used
The perfect solution would be 4G swap file on ramdisk and 4G regular ram… Can anyone tell me if this will actually work? When you set only one Swapfile windows asks for a reboot… (?) and since we are trying to set it on a ramdrive the ramdrive will be gone when rebooting and only be back after rebooting when we recreate the swap again asking for a reboot (endless loop)?
May 23rd, 2008 04:36
Philippe,
Try Vista with no swap for a while and see how it works - don’t believe everthing you read. I’ve been using XP 32 with 4 GB with no swap for some time, and I’m doing Java development with a couple Eclipses side by side, JBoss running etc. Vista’s even better at memory management.
Even if you disable disk swapping that doesn’t mean Windows will not create the swap, but it will be in memory - basicallt the swap on disk is an extension of the swap in memory it does already.
Creating a memory disk to keep the disk swap will just add to the overhead - I bet the memory management in the ramdisk is less efficient than Vista’s native swap mamangement techniques.
You can try stopping Vista SuperFetch service, that’s the one that fills up memory with applications you run the most.
Dan Dar3
May 23rd, 2008 22:38
Thank you for this response. I will surely try it and let you know the results of it.
I’m not too fond of disabled SuperFetch because that is some of the strong points for a smooth running system. In an evening I mostly have used about 20 different applications and I would hate it if it took to long to start an application, even if it is only the first time slow…
But I guess it mostly only a perception 
Thanks,
PhH
May 26th, 2008 05:54
Hi, I’m here to report back…
You’re idea of disabling the pagefile completely helped. I have also found info on MSes pages that you CAN disble it, unless some specific application… Great!!
Now I was thinking of using ramdisk because I would be able then to use the speed thing (ReadyBoost I guess) that is used on USB sticks. But even if I run Ramdisk as an admin it won’t allow me to, it says FAILED. Tss I will have to look further
Grtw Philippe
May 26th, 2008 07:32
Hi Philippe,
Great stuff - I don’t know if this apply to vista, but in XP I used to have some problems every now when I disable disk swap where it was complaining of low virtual memory but I believe that was due to free memory fragmentation while an application required a large amount of continuos RAM (my case was an Ecplise asking for 512 MB).
Anyways, you can use ReadyBoost regardles of the amount of memor and whether you use a RamDisk or not, make sure you get a SD card or USB stick that was found to be work with ReadyBoost - you can find a list with them on the web.
I had a problem in XP with the RamDisk where I change the radio set to RAM Drive instead of Fixed Disk and that was showing install errors - try with Fixed Disk as per screenshot.
I use the RamDisk for a temporary disk drive - make sure you allocte enough (128-256 MB or more) some applications like large installers will complain with very dubious error messages when they don’t have enough room to expand in TEMP dir.
May 26th, 2008 08:14
Dr Mark: Where do you get the latest version?
I have downloaded this program from like 5 websites and all of them have the RRAMDISK.SYS with the following:
File Version: 1.0.2003.1209
The first one I downloaded has modified date of 12/09/2003 which matches the fileversion information.
So even though I have files dated 2008, it seems they are just updated timestamps and not updated files.
All 5 versions have identical number of files and identical file sizes.
This program works great under XP 32, just wish I could get a version that works with Vista x64. I have a machine with 12GB of RAM and I am hoping to make a 8GB RAMDRIVE.
May 26th, 2008 08:27
OK So I found the newer version as posted above, I was reading the comments backwards as I assumed the newest was on the bottom.
That and Badongo was not working properly from my Vista machine, so I downloaded from XP Machine using FireFox.
But now the problem is the GUI installer doesn’t work on Vista x64. Still says Failed immediately on Install button and I already tried run as admin.
Can I just cheat and export the proper Service entry from my XP Machine’s registry and then change the driver name to be the x64 one and import into my Vista machine?
May 29th, 2008 11:28
Sad to report the same problem with Vista 64. As soon as I click install it just says failed. The real irony of this is that Vista 32 only sees up to 4GB of ram. My 64 bit Vista machine with 8GB ram would be ideal to run this. Hope to see a fix so it can be installed on Vista 64.
June 26th, 2008 16:28
I also tried to install using ramdisk.exe as the administrator on Win XP 64-bit SP 2 and I got a “failed!” message. Please help! Thanks in advance!
I tried the version of ramdisk.exe, 1.3.0.0. from an archive gavotte_ramdisk_20080101.
June 26th, 2008 17:45
OK, here is the latest file and how to install;
1. download the updated version at this link;
http://vista.inoxa.de/Dateien/Gavotte_RAMdisk__v.1.0.4096.4_25.01.2008.zip
The version posted here might also work, but anyway. Extract the archive to a directory.
2. Go to the Control Panel and click Add Hardware
3. Click Next and wait for the search to complete.
4. Choose “Yes, I have already connected the hardware” and click Next
5. Scroll to the very bottom and highlight “Add a new hardware device” and click Next
6. Choose “Install the hardware that I manually select from a list” and click Next
7. Wait for the search to complete and click Next
8. Highlight “Show All Devices” and click Next (warning: this part may take a few minutes)
9. Click Have Disk… (Important! Be sure not to click on anything else or scroll through the lists before you click Have Disk. Doing so will screw up this process.)
10. Click Browse and locate the folder you saved the rramdisk.inf file in, select ramdisk.inf and click Open
11. Click OK, then Next and Next again.
12. Click Continue Anyway if a warning pops up and then Finish
13. Right click on the “ram4g.reg” file in the extracted directory and “merge”.
14. Now when you launch the ramdisk.exe utility, you should be able to see the options properly enabled. Set the desired ramdisk size and click OK. It should be ready to use at the default drive R:
Good luck!
June 29th, 2008 03:43
Installed Gavotte_RAMdisk__v.1.0.4096.4_25.01.2008.zip but it hung every time I tried to start it, then it killed my XP Home SP3 system stone dead, and trashed the registry requiring a restore.
oops!
July 9th, 2008 10:23
[...] You will need RAM DISK software. Free software for 2000, XP and Vista you can find here. [...]
July 11th, 2008 07:45
Same problem here with Vista64.
Is there a new version, yet, that works on Vista64? Or a tutorial how to get it working?
Cheers
July 12th, 2008 05:10
How can I uninstall it under Vista?
I tried uninstall, it says reboot needed. before reboot rams disk seems deleted but after reboot it is back again.
Any ideas?
July 15th, 2008 04:23
someone asked it before, but did not get an answer i think: is there any way to load the image to the ram disk without using the GUI provided? i would like to write the image at shutdown and load the image (already possible) at startup.
July 22nd, 2008 02:18
[...] I am running this from an XP virtual machine with the ram disk that is available for free from here: http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/05/27/free-ramdisk-for-windows-vista-xp-2000-and-2003-server/ [...]
July 24th, 2008 05:49
Oh my god, whatever you use for your translations. Throw it away! The german translation is one of the worst that I’ve ever seen!
July 24th, 2008 09:55
OH MY GOD!
This is the best tool I’ve added to my collection in a long time!
I was Googling for a ram disk, but as noted, all I found was garbage payware RAM disk tools (whatever happened to a RAM disk that came with MS-DOS, Microsoft?). I was about to shell out $8 for a payware RAM disk driver that I couldn’t even tell worked, until I smacked my head straight and googled for “ram disk freeware”!
Now where can I donate those $8? This tool is perfect!
July 24th, 2008 11:14
Hmm. A small note.
DON’T USE A DISK SIZE OTHER THAN THE ONES IN THE LIST! It’s typeable, but if you enter, say, “1.25G”, it’ll promptly take your whole computer down with a blue screen.
Worse, if you aren’t lucky, your computer won’t even start back up - I’m guessing because those settings were saved and it tries again when you try booting! Ouch. Ouch ouch.
Other than that, well, it works fine - I just wish I could write in my own RAM disk size. It’s happily granular up to the 1G point, but then they start jumping obscenely high like 2G and 4G, etc… and there’s no in between. I needed a 1.25GB disk because 1.0 was too small and I needed the extra 256mb to work in… =(
But thanks for the tool anyway!
July 28th, 2008 21:56
UPS,
try running the app ‘as administrator’, otherwise it will keep you prompted for reboot and do nothing.
August 12th, 2008 21:17
I don’t understand???
Many of you are saying that you put your swapfile on ramdisk which is not logical, because when your system eats all the ram then it use swapfile(fake, hard disk memory) and if the swapfile is on ramdisk then … error, error, error …
August 13th, 2008 00:00
Yojimbo,
except for the author of the post and a user that says he wants to put the swap in the ramdrive, nobody else recommend it. Putting swap file on ramdrive will be actually counter productive as CPU usage is going to increase. If you have plenty of RAM, rather than put the swap file in a ramdrive better disable virtual memory altogether.
Dan
August 16th, 2008 10:45
[...] Install a Ramdisk Download it here. It’s free and has a gui. Set it to about 192-384mb depending how much you plan to use for [...]
August 18th, 2008 02:14
Warning: I stupidly tried to make a ramdrive of 3G, since I have 6G RAM, forgetting that Windows makes only a max of 3G available to processes.
Instead of giving a warning, it shut the computer off, and it wouldn’t boot again until I said to boot with last usable configuration.
If you haven’t put /3gb in your boot.ini, this would presumably happen if you tried to make a 2G ramdrive.
August 18th, 2008 02:25
Putting the swapfile on RAMdrive will probably give a speed improvement, because Windows stupidly swaps parts of the kernel out ALL THE TIME, regardless of how much RAM you have available.
However, as Dan pointed out, it’s better to disable the swap partition. Putting it on the RAMdrive could crash your system if you use up your RAM.
August 18th, 2008 18:06
Phil,
You may be referring to “executive paging” - you can control whether the kernel mode drivers and code has to be swapped. See here:
Disable paging the executive to improve performance
http://www.metron.co.uk/reference/performance_tips/windows/win_tip23.html
August 20th, 2008 05:47
I just tried to use the program and it gave me a blue screen of death with a ’stop’ error. I selected 256MB and then the computer died. Can anyone help?
thanks.
August 20th, 2008 06:47
sorry… I am on XP SP3 32bit.
August 20th, 2008 16:35
Hi there again. As posted earlier I have a very good working Vista 64 with 8G of RAM with paging file disabled, Quad Extreme 3Ghz. All of the paging is disabled on all of my disks… My machine keeps running very good. I can multitask between games and reget and music library and pokertracker…. and so on.
Still as pointed out in a lot of articles my system does not get beyond 3G of RAM usage when I check the logs…. So I have like about, more or less, 3G of ram which I would like to assign to a “removable” drive and put readyboost on it…
Problem:
1. I cannot install the ramdrive, it just says failed. I tried with the admin privilige.
2. It seems that the ramdrive cannot be set to act like “removable” media like USB stick.
To speed up my system i’m looking for some High Perf USB memory. Preferably 8G.
August 22nd, 2008 16:13
not working with Vista x64 here…
September 20th, 2008 04:28
[...] 2GB RAM and set 512MB for Ramdisk using Gavotte’s ramdisk app to shunt temporary internet files onto, instead of my SSD Bookmark [...]
September 28th, 2008 05:16
[...] Posted by Lukeatluke How? RamDisk __________________ [...]
October 13th, 2008 04:24
[...] on the net seem really robust, with the most favoured being the freeware RamDisk that comes from MyDigitalLife. There are also plenty of other commercial alternatives. The freeware RamDisk has a simple user [...]