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.

Ramdisk Install Failed in Vista

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.

Ramdisk in Vista

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.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, May 27th, 2007 at 3:20 am and is filed under Operating Systems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

48 Responses to “Free Ramdisk for Windows Vista, XP, 2000 and 2003 Server”

Pages: [2] 1 » Show All

LolaChico
June 29th, 2008 03:43
48

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!
Gokhan
June 26th, 2008 17:45
47

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!
Gokhan
June 26th, 2008 16:28
46

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.
Vista64-Greg
May 29th, 2008 11:28
45

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.
Casper42
May 26th, 2008 08:27
44

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?
Casper42
May 26th, 2008 08:14
43

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.
Dan Dar3
May 26th, 2008 07:32
42

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.
PhH
May 26th, 2008 05:54
41

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
PhH
May 23rd, 2008 22:38
40

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
Dan Dar3
May 23rd, 2008 04:36
39

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
Philippe
May 22nd, 2008 22:20
38

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)?
Denis Fayruzov » 1XP tweaks: переносим временные файлы и кэш на ramdisk
May 13th, 2008 04:53
37

[...] реализовать задуманное. Итак, берем реализацию rramdisk, про которую сам автор говорит: There are plenty of Ramdisk driver and [...]
Jack
May 4th, 2008 21:06
36

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.
Dan Dar3
April 18th, 2008 20:43
35

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)
I Just Had To Buy An Asus EEE PC
April 11th, 2008 15:12
34

[...] the memory to 2GB is recommended and besides, you can create a RAMdisk for more working space using Gavotte’s free ramdisk [...]
Upgrade RAM ให้ EEE PC ดีไหม? « Ninelouis’s Weblog
April 7th, 2008 22:31
33

[...] 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 [...]
Matt
March 21st, 2008 13:07
32

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
Brice
March 6th, 2008 06:05
31

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
PatrickE
March 6th, 2008 03:16
30

Just set up a 256Mb ramdrive using this. Perfect. Wish it was opensourced tho…
dr mark
March 1st, 2008 04:58
29

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
dr mark
March 1st, 2008 04:05
28

05.23.2007 version and greater allows for x64 support
dr mark
March 1st, 2008 04:03
27

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)
Robert
February 28th, 2008 03:35
26

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.