Free Ramdisk for Windows Vista, XP, 2000 and 2003 Server
- Parameters registry is
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\RRamdisk\Parameters\
Why RRamdisk? Because XP SP1 contain a Ramdisk driver for XP Embeded.
- Parameter: DiskSizeM, DiskSizeK
Your desired disk size, the unit is M bytes or K bytes. The DiskSizeK has higher priority.
- Parameter: MediaType
The reported drive type:
1 — RAM Drive
2 — Fixed Media (default)
3 — Removable Media
4 — Floppy Diskette - Parameter: DriveLetter
Name say it is, default is R:
- Parameter: SectorsPerCluster
Your desired cluster size, zero for driver pickup:
<= 2M FAT12, cluster=512
<= 32M FAT16, cluster=512
<= 64M FAT16, cluster=1k
<= 128M FAT16, cluster=2k
<= 256M FAT16, cluster=4k
<= 512M FAT32, cluster=2k
<= 16G FAT32, cluster=4k
and more...You can specify smaller cluster size, force pre-format as FAT32.
- Parameter: Image
Maintained by rdutil utlilty, mainly for preload NTFS image. Eg:
- Load ramdisk, don’t write anything.
- Format the ramdisk
FORMAT /FS:NTFS /Q /V:RamDisk /A:512 R:
- Adjust logfile to minimum size
CHKDSK /L:2048 R:
- Reset access rights
CACLS R:\ /G: BUILTIN\Adminstrators:F
- Create necessary structure
MKDIR R:\TEMP
- Pack the disk image and save to registry
rdutil R: registry
Notes:
- You should leave RamDisk as clean as possible before packing, the max packed image size is 64K.
- The disk image only valid to same RamDisk size, you should re-create disk image when size changed.
- The driver internal formater will disable if this registry present, corrupt/size-mismatch value leave an un-formated disk.
rdutil Utlility Usage:
- Backup registry image
rdutil save filename
- Restore registry image
rdutil load filename
- Report packed image size
rdutil R:
rdutil registry
rdutil unpacked_fileSecond command reading DriveLetter from registry, while the third is packing an unpacked image file.
- Packing image & save to registry
rdutil R: registry
- Packing image & save to file
rdutil R: packed_file
- Unpacking image
rdutil unpack packed_file unpacked_file
- Link NTFS junction to Ramdisk
rdutil link temp \
- You can re-format RamDisk except RAMDrive media type. Eg:
FixedMedia type:
FORMAT /FS:NTFS /FORCE /Q /V:RamDisk /A:512 R:RemovableMedia type:
ECHO Y | FORMAT /FS:NTFS /FORCE /Q /V:RamDisk /A:512 R:You can place your format command to startup script. I don’t recommend re-format to FAT, the pre-formated RamDisk is more efficient than other format utililty.
- Pagefile support – You can set pagefile to FixMedia type disk w/ pre-formated system. If you need other MediaType or re-format, use the addswap.exe utility:
addswap r:\pagefile.sys 16 32
Create pagefile r:\pagefile.sys with min=16M max=32M.
- TEMP directory – You should set TEMP/TMP directory to TEMP sub-directory, don’t use the root directory.
- NTFS junction point to RAMDrive – You can’t create NTFS junction point to RAMDrive media type, Fixed & Removable Media type should work.
- Connectix VirtualPC compatibility – Someone report problem with VirtualPC+physical volume/disk. Please set MediaType to RAMDrive/Removable.
- Mountpoint without DriveLetter
Clear DriveLetter registry value will not create Drive Letter for Ramdisk.
Attn. Don’t delete the DriveLetter registry, which fall to default R:. You can setup mountpoint/junction linking to this unnamed Ramdisk. Eg:
rdutil link C:\ramdisk
link C:\ramdisk to root of Ramdiskrdutil link C:\TEMP TEMP
link C:\TEMP to \TEMP at Ramdiskrmdir C:\ramdisk
rmdir can remove the link without clear target contentNoDriveLetter configuration isn’t recommended, because most AntiVirus software cannot realtime scan Volume w/o Drive Letter.
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Entries (RSS)
June 10th, 2009 04:30
Fails to install on Windows XP 64bit.
Error message is simply “Failed”.
Please can you raise this with the developer?
June 7th, 2009 19:47
[...] avete creato un ramdrive (consiglio Gavotte Ramdisk), potete spostare lì sopra i files temporanei. Nel caso abbiate poca RAM (es. 512 Mb), un RAMDRIVE [...]
June 4th, 2009 16:57
Goodness me, what a terrible article… I’ll assume the writer is not a native English speaker, so I won’t go into the poor grammar… However, some technical inaccuracies:
“Ramdisk has one obvious downside, that it’s volatile and not solid state.”
Since when was RAM not solid state? Which part of a RAM disk moves? RAM disks *are* solid state.
“ramdisk can be used to store … swap space for virtual memory, …”
???? Swap space is there to handle the situation where you’ve run out of physical memory – why on earth would you reduce your available physical memory in order to create swap space in, erm, physical memory??
Regards,
Someone off to read something else.
June 3rd, 2009 09:30
On My VISTA Laptop works fine, but I need to reload the RAMDRIVE in Windows 7 after every re-boot.
I always get the following error…
Windows can’t access this disk
The disc might be corrupt. Make sure the disc uses a format that Windows recognizes. If the disc is unformatted, you need to format before using it.
April 8th, 2009 10:33
[...] Solution [...]