25 replies to this topic

[yo-mike]

You can still download a free license RAM Disk Creator from versiontracker called Disk Velox 0.3.1!!!!!

Get 'em while you can folks!!! They increase game and Application performance mucho grande!

Cheers!!!!!

[bobbob]

yo-mike, on October 10th 2007, 10:43 AM, said:

They increase game and Application performance mucho grande!

By loading the files you use into a RAM cache that the OS would normally... load into a RAM cache. That's a wonderful invention, I wonder why Apple never thought of that?

[Ranger_Joe]

Is this anything like the RAM disk that came with System 7 back in the day?

[Janichsan]

Most useless software ever. You want a fast pseudo disk? Create a disk image.

[Eric5h5]

RAM disks were useful during the floppy disc era.  But that was 15-20 years ago.

--Eric

[Tesseract]

Also, OS X can make RAM disks out of the box.

[yo-mike]

bobbob, on October 10th 2007, 03:16 PM, said:

By loading the files you use into a RAM cache that the OS would normally... load into a RAM cache. That's a wonderful invention, I wonder why Apple never thought of that?

An actual RAM Disk is faster than you would believe. Have you ever tried one for OS X?

[yo-mike]

Janichsan, on October 10th 2007, 03:35 PM, said:

Most useless software ever. You want a fast pseudo disk? Create a disk image.

I have and do create .dmg's and .img's, and yes they're super fast too! I have a great time with them!

But, I wouldn't call a RAMDisk the most useless software. I conserves energy, HardDisk use, and is at least just as fast and probably faster. Plus it doesn't take up any HD space!
Hence, it's name: RAMDisk. Isn't that awesome!

Ranger_Joe, on October 10th 2007, 03:35 PM, said:

Is this anything like the RAM disk that came with System 7 back in the day?

I know it comes with OS 9. So, yes. All Classic Mac OS's.
Today too, Mac OS X!

Tesseract, on October 10th 2007, 07:25 PM, said:

Also, OS X can make RAM disks out of the box.

Umm, yes. (or so it's reported it can)
There's no actual System preference or anything in Disk Utility to do it by default though.

You need to use the Command line: linky to OSX Hints

Have you created a RAMDisk by the Command line?

Eric5h5, on October 10th 2007, 04:44 PM, said:

RAM disks were useful during the floppy disc era.  But that was 15-20 years ago.

--Eric

Umm, what do floppy disc's have to do with fast RAM Disk's on Mac OS X?

bobbob, on October 10th 2007, 03:16 PM, said:

By loading the files you use into a RAM cache that the OS would normally... load into a RAM cache. That's a wonderful invention, I wonder why Apple never thought of that?

Umm, yeah ok.
you copy your App. into the RAMDisk and kick some major butt!

[No One]

So, when do we get the OSX version of Mode32?

[Janichsan]

yo-mike, on October 11th 2007, 08:47 AM, said:

I have and do create .dmg's and .img's, and yes they're super fast too! I have a great time with them!

But, I wouldn't call a RAMDisk the most useless software. I conserves energy, HardDisk use, and is at least just as fast and probably faster. Plus it doesn't take up any HD space!
Hence, it's name: RAMDisk. Isn't that awesome!

Guess were the contents of your mounted disk images is stored... (as long as they fit completely into RAM)
And do you know where anything that does not fit completely into RAM, including so called "RAM disks"? On your hard drive.

Quote

There's no actual System preference or anything in Disk Utility to do it by default though.

You need to use the Command line: linky to OSX Hints

Have you created a RAMDisk by the Command line?

You've seen the date of that hint? May 30 '02. That's basically MacOS X Stone Age. And do you know what he's actually doing? Creating a disk images and mounting it into RAM...

I repeat it: special software for RAM disks nowadays? Completely useless.

[Tesseract]

Janichsan, on October 11th 2007, 06:33 PM, said:

You've seen the date of that hint? May 30 '02. That's basically MacOS X Stone Age. And do you know what he's actually doing? Creating a disk images and mounting it into RAM...

It still works. And yeah, he does create an ordinary image first, but then he copies its contents to a true RAM disk. I guess that's to avoid having to format it and copy all the files in.

It's still not particularly useful though. Read-only data will be cached anyway, and only having your writes on a volatile medium is not a good idea. Plus pinning some data in memory will just cause more swapping of other data.

Battery usage may be a valid point, but as I am not a laptop owner I don't know how OS X behaves when on battery power. Does it do something like Linux's laptop mode, which will delay writes for up to ten minutes, do them all in one go, then spin down the hard drive again?

[Janichsan]

Tesseract, on October 11th 2007, 02:13 PM, said:

Does it do something like Linux's laptop mode, which will delay writes for up to ten minutes, do them all in one go, then spin down the hard drive again?

Considering that the hard drive is "spun-up" promptly when you do something specific with files, I assume not. Maybe for cache accesses on a lower system level, but I'm not sure.

[Dark_Archon]

OS X can already do this, and it works fine through CLI. Guess where the contents of the RAM disk are stored when you shut down? RAM is volatile, it doesn't store its state when there is no power going to it.

I don't know about you, but having about 130x the amount of hard drive space as RAM, I'd rather just use that.

Sure it is fast, but it isn't worth using the RAM. When you are doing something like playing a game, guess where the data gets stored? If you move the game to RAM, it just becomes redundant when it loads the files that are already in RAM into the RAM the system is using.

Nothing to see here folks!

[Eric5h5]

yo-mike, on October 11th 2007, 02:47 AM, said:

Umm, what do floppy disc's have to do with fast RAM Disk's on Mac OS X?

What's wit'h th'e extraneou's apostrophe's?  The point is that RAM disks are pretty much useless in this day and age, though they their uses decades ago.  Welcome to 2007.  

--Eric

[Hapa Hanu]

RAM Disc can still be useful. If you are running audio mixing software; drop your sound samples into the RAM Disc so that the hard drive doesn't have to jump around to read the samples over and over again. Reduces wear and tear on the hard drive and minimizes latency in playback.

[Magnum]

What type of disk would one use for a RAM disk?

[Eric5h5]

Hapa Hanu, on October 11th 2007, 11:08 AM, said:

If you are running audio mixing software; drop your sound samples into the RAM Disc so that the hard drive doesn't have to jump around to read the samples over and over again. Reduces wear and tear on the hard drive and minimizes latency in playback.

Somehow I don't have that problem...the audio mixing stuff I run keeps sound samples in RAM anyway.

--Eric

[bobbob]

Hapa Hanu, on October 11th 2007, 08:08 AM, said:

drop your sound samples into the RAM Disc so that the hard drive doesn't have to jump around to read the samples over and over again

The OS will cache those files in RAM, anyways, plus any app would probably have to decode the files into RAM on top of that and would be stupid to read the files over and over again when it could just do it once.

[yo-mike]

Magnum, on October 11th 2007, 12:16 PM, said:

What type of disk would one use for a RAM disk?

An Application. Such as a web browser (Which is in a 64 MB RAM Disk as I post)-
and it is running faster and I love it! It rocks!
A game App. (which is why I even brought this up in the first place) iPhoto, or iAnything you want to run faster. I haven't tried it yet with a .img or a .dmg disk yet. But hey, there's an idea.

Isn't anyone going to try it out and post back or what?

Quote

OS X can already do this, and it works fine through CLI.

But you can download an App. for free and use it.

[Hapa Hanu]

Upon occasion, when I use CuBase 4.1, it is convenient to use the RAM Disk.

CuBase prefers to load it's sound buffer directly from the hard drive, up to 784KB per channel I believe.

So if I have 15 samples with an average size of 5 MB each: I would prefer to have the samples loaded in the RAM Disk rather than have the hard drive sifting through 15 stereo samples simultaneously. I hope this clears up my previous post.

Sorry but I cannot afford the new software that is out there. Yeah my CuBase is almost ten years old but at least it's legal.