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)
April 8th, 2009 01:29
Use it for Virtual memory? What reason would I have for that? VM is used when I run out of memory, so why would I use my RAM for it? Isn’t it better to use it directly as RAM, not as VM?
March 30th, 2009 10:06
i open the file on admin and when i try to click install and it still fails
March 27th, 2009 14:18
Thanks for the DepositFiles file
February 10th, 2009 21:04
Hi, i want to have a preformatet NTFS 64MB Ramdisk (maybe compressed).
i dit everythin like in the manual.
create 64mb dig
Parameter: Image
maintained by rdutil utlilty, mainly for preload NTFS image. eg:
1) load ramdisk, don’t write anything
2) format the ramdisk
FORMAT /FS:NTFS /Q /C /V:RamDisk /A:512 R:
3) adjust logfile to minimum size
CHKDSK /L:2048 R:
4) reset access rights
CACLS R:\ /G: BUILTIN\Adminstrators:F
5) create necessary structure
MKDIR R:\TEMP
6) pack the disk image and save to registry
rdutil R: registry
and then this happens and i dont know why
C:\>rdutil R: registry
locking volume R: …done
dismount volume R: …done
packing volume R: …done
disk size 65536K, packed size 78820
saving to registry…too large, only 64K allowed <<<<<<<<<<
February 9th, 2009 06:24
so brucemcn, if imdisk is not the solution what is?
January 28th, 2009 23:37
[...] Vista support. Suck. I turned to the Internet and found a nice freeware RAMDisk (with GUI) here. It’s very nice, although it doesn’t include a save-on-shutdown feature. I’m [...]
January 26th, 2009 18:24
[...] sposta la cache di alcune applicazioni in RAM, rendendo le applicazioni molto più veloci. Qui una guida completa in [...]
January 13th, 2009 01:50
[...] problemino. Tempo fa ho scritto un articolo in cui spiegavo come utilizzare un RamDisk su cui spostare la cache di Firefox. Ho scoperto che alcune volte, al “risveglio” del PC dallo [...]
January 7th, 2009 02:11
doesnt work. when i reboot it says “windows cannot access this disk” it is corrupt.
downloaded it 2 different mirrors, ran as admin on vista, set 32mb ram drive. doesnt work
January 2nd, 2009 01:32
http://www.cenatek.com/product_page_ramdisk.php
for vista 64 aswell!
December 31st, 2008 12:10
ImDisk is not the solution
1)does not use PAE in 32bit OS’s
2)ImDisk fails at imaging DVD movie disk with dvd43 running in the background – don’t know if the problem is with a)creation of the iso or b)emulation of a dvd
From what I’ve seen I’d say the problem is emulation but I’m not 100%.
stopped testing after these two problems surfaced (could be more)
December 28th, 2008 08:10
the final solution is ImDisk!
http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html#ImDisk
freeware and working with ALL win os, including x64 versions
December 17th, 2008 00:58
[...] ตัวโปรแกรมและวิธีการลง โหลดจากนี่เลย มีคำอธิบาย [...]
November 25th, 2008 13:20
I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT SAMSUNG OMNIA
November 25th, 2008 10:42
GREATE!
November 24th, 2008 01:11
One link (http://www.box.net/shared/htpmm1zm8e) to the ramdisk says the user has exceeded his bandwidth and the other (http://depositfiles.com/files/916161) says I am already downloading a file from them when clearly I am not.
Can someone suggest a real place that we can download from?
November 18th, 2008 07:16
[...] questi 8GB, uno l’ho destinato alla creazione di un RAMDisk che viene visto come una unità disco rigido contrassegnata dalla lettera B:. Su questa unità RAM [...]
November 13th, 2008 01:50
BTW,
The GUI for Gavotte Ramdisk works with 64-bit Vista … I just had to enable the “Run as Administrator.” :/
November 10th, 2008 12:45
Hi gh,
I tried the superspeed 64-bit version. During installation it pops up a window that says it will only install on “clienet” OS’es such as XP-64 or Vista-64. I could not find a Superspeed ramddisk for the 2003 Server 64.
November 10th, 2008 10:19
Simple (noGUI) setup:
devcon.exe install RRamDisk.sys ramdisk
November 8th, 2008 08:39
Dori,
I’ trialling Superspeed and it is faultless so far.
I’ll pay the money for the right, stable product!
November 8th, 2008 06:54
I found another solution by Qsoft that works for Windows 2003 Server x64 running on an i64 platform. Not sure if it works for Vista x64, XP x64, or Win 2003 a64. Do a search for “Qsoft Ramdisk”.
This is “free” except they are asking for a $25 “donation.” The free version is full featured and no expiration, but will generate fatal message “please donate …” at the lower right hand icon tray. If you donate $25 they will send you a “nonag” version to install in your machine.
November 8th, 2008 06:40
There may be hope!
When I rebooted the machine I got a Stop Error: 0xc0000428. This was caused by Forced Driver Signature Signing under Windows Vista (x86 and x64). Googling a few hours later and I find this web site:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=250657It’s actually copied from here: http://www.tipandtrick.net/2008/permanently-turn-off-and-disable-64-bit-x64-windows-vista-forced-driver-signature-signing-with-readydriver-plus/
… which lists a utility that disables this signature check.
The download URL of the utility is:
http://www.ziddu.com/download.php?uid=ZrCflpqlY6yimJunr6yZlJyiYa%2BWlZmn1
Make sure you have your firewall and anti-virus updated for this site! Anyway, I installed this ReadyDriver Plus on the Vista x64 SP1 box and it worked!. The only downside is I have to edit the registry to modify anything in Gavotte Ramdrive because the GUI doesn’t work.
Good Luck!
November 8th, 2008 02:18
Tried installing Gavotte Ramdisk to Vista x64 (Business Ed) SP1 by manually adding the driver and I get this error message:
Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)
C:\Program Files (x86)\Gavotte Ramdisk\rramdisk64.sys
Any ideas?
November 4th, 2008 18:10
Yes I see it … Abandon all hope back in August. This is a real bummer. Because Cenatek RAMDiskSE has a FAT16 and FAT32 options and both of them bomb on the WinServer 2003 x64
. Superspeed has an x64 but will only install on XP64 and Vista64 but not on the server OSes. 