RAM disk

[Chris W]

I am using a ram disk to help keep hard drive usage down. I have moved
my temporary internet files and the temp directories to the ram drive
but I am having some problems. The software I am using now, AR Soft ram
disk, won't let me have a disk any bigger than 128mb and when I download
large files, such as service packs, it puts them in the temp directory
and then moves the file to where I tell it to save it. Is there anyway
to get the browser to bypass putting files in the temp directory and
just put them directly where I specify?

Chris W

 

[Rick]

I am using a ram disk to help keep hard drive usage down. I have moved
my temporary internet files and the temp directories to the ram drive
but I am having some problems. The software I am using now, AR Soft ram
disk, won't let me have a disk any bigger than 128mb and when I download
large files, such as service packs, it puts them in the temp directory
and then moves the file to where I tell it to save it. Is there anyway
to get the browser to bypass putting files in the temp directory and
just put them directly where I specify?

For IE? No.

The real answer to your problem is to either move to a larger
hard drive, add another drive, or free up some room on your
existing drive.

Rick

 

[Chris W]

The real answer to your problem is to either move to a larger
hard drive, add another drive, or free up some room on your
existing drive.

No, the real answer is for the morons at Microsoft to get a brain. What
is the point of saving a file in one place simply to later move it to
where it is supposed to be!? There is only one possible reason, and
that is to help stop idiots that see a file there and think, because
they see the file, it is done downloading. The same thing could happen
while a very large file is being copied to or from a slow hard drive.
The better solution for the never ending futile attempt to make things
idiot proof, is to set the the files hidden attribute and then unset it
after the transfer is complete. Of course if you goal is to ware out
hard drives faster, then Microsoft is doing it right.

Chris W

P.S. Apparently you didn't even bother to read the subject line to
notice I was talking about RAM drives, NOT hard drives! And I'm not
trying to save hard drive space by buying more RAM! That would be
pretty stupid, especially since the Microsoft seems to think, the more
RAM you have, the more virtual memory you need, when just the opposite
is true. Why is it when I had 256MB of RAM and about 384MB of virtual
memory, Windows was happy but now that I have 1024MB of RAM it still
can't live with out a swap file? It now wants 1.5gig of virtual memory,
that is idiotic. Don't even get me started on the registry.

 

[Rick]

No, the real answer is for the morons at Microsoft to get a brain. What
is the point of saving a file in one place simply to later move it to
where it is supposed to be!? There is only one possible reason, and
that is to help stop idiots that see a file there and think, because
they see the file, it is done downloading. The same thing could happen
while a very large file is being copied to or from a slow hard drive.
The better solution for the never ending futile attempt to make things
idiot proof, is to set the the files hidden attribute and then unset it
after the transfer is complete. Of course if you goal is to ware out
hard drives faster, then Microsoft is doing it right.

Whatever. That's got absolutely nothing to do with answering
your question. And the answer is, if you're using IE, there's no
way to avoid the temp folder during downloads.

P.S. Apparently you didn't even bother to read the subject line to
notice I was talking about RAM drives, NOT hard drives! And I'm not
trying to save hard drive space by buying more RAM!

I didn't say you were. To quote your original post:
"I am using a ram disk to help keep hard drive usage down."

Any way you look at it, that's pretty damned stupid. Simply put,
there is no reason to use a ramdisk in Win2K. Ever. It's slower
as well as redundant.

That would be
pretty stupid, especially since the Microsoft seems to think, the more
RAM you have, the more virtual memory you need, when just the opposite
is true. Why is it when I had 256MB of RAM and about 384MB of virtual
memory, Windows was happy but now that I have 1024MB of RAM it still
can't live with out a swap file? It now wants 1.5gig of virtual memory,
that is idiotic. Don't even get me started on the registry.

Win2K has a 2GB per process limit, and Microsoft has no way
of knowing ahead of time what apps people are going to run. If
you aren't using any major apps that might require swaps of large
amounts of memory, or using system-specific functions such as
suspend-to-ram, you don't need a large pagefile.

Rick

 

[Chris W]

I didn't say you were. To quote your original post:
"I am using a ram disk to help keep hard drive usage down."

Any way you look at it, that's pretty damned stupid. Simply put,
there is no reason to use a ramdisk in Win2K. Ever. It's slower
as well as redundant.

A RAM disk is very useful, and not at all redundant for helping to make
your hard drive last longer, and keeping fragmentation down. Windows in
general and web browsing in particular, creates a very large number of
small (and some large) "temporary" files. Keeping all of those files on
a RAM disk will dramatically reduce the load on the hard disk, which, if
we recall from computer science 101, is for long term "permanent" storage.

While my statement about keeping hard disk usage down could be
interpreted to mean using less space, it can also mean keeping the
amount of reading and writing down to help reduce the load on the hard
disk. It should be obvious that is what I was referring to. In an
ideal system the hard drive should only be accessed when reading or
writing a data file, when loading an application into memory or when you
run out of memory (which shouldn't be happening much on a system with a
Gig of RAM). A hard drive is a mechanical device, and like all
mechanical devices, sooner or later it will ware out, so don't tell me
that trying to reduce the number of times the head moves back and forth
across the disk isn't a worth while goal.

Win2K has a 2GB per process limit, and Microsoft has no way
of knowing ahead of time what apps people are going to run. If
you aren't using any major apps that might require swaps of large
amounts of memory, or using system-specific functions such as
suspend-to-ram, you don't need a large pagefile.

That does nothing to explain why it was happy with a combined total of
RAM and virtual memory of 640MB, and now with 1 Gig of RAM it wants an
additional 1.5 Gig of virtual memory. Nor does it explain why, if you
don't let windows have a swap file, it just won't run right, even when
you have plenty of RAM to run all your applications. When I was running
with 256MB I didn't need virtual memory very often, I haven't ever even
came close to needing any virtual memory since I started using this
machine with 1 Gig of RAM, so why does Windows still want to wast hard
disk space and ware out my hard drive sooner by writing a 1.5 gig swap
file to it? Yes I know I can set it smaller but if I get rid of it
completely, like I want to, some things just won't work. And yes I know
I am getting way of the original topic so back to it. The solution is
to spend the money and get software that will allow a larger RAM disk.

Chris W

 

[*Vanguard*]

"Chris W" said in news:H7FOb.15066$rh5.74@okepread04:

I am using a ram disk to help keep hard drive usage down. I have
moved my temporary internet files and the temp directories to the ram
drive but I am having some problems. The software I am using now, AR
Soft ram disk, won't let me have a disk any bigger than 128mb and
when I download large files, such as service packs, it puts them in
the temp directory and then moves the file to where I tell it to save
it. Is there anyway to get the browser to bypass putting files in
the temp directory and just put them directly where I specify?

Chris W

A Google search on "RAM disk" turned up several utilities. For example, one
was at http://www.cenatek.com/product_ramdisk.cfm for $69.

 

[George Hester]

The solution is to give up your misconception of the benefits of a RAM drive. If you don't want to do that and you want your Temporary Internet Files and your %tmp% %temp% environement set them to your RAM drive. But I can tell you you are cruising for a bruiser if you do. The pagefile.sys is neccessary for a variety reasons more than you may think.

 

[Chris W]

The solution is to give up your misconception of the benefits of a
RAM drive.

Is it your contention that putting the Internee cache on a RAM disk
will have no impact on the life of the hard drive?

If you don't want to do that and you want your Temporary Internet
Files and your %tmp% %temp% environement set them to your RAM drive.
But I can tell you you are cruising for a bruiser if you do.

Can you give any examples?

The pagefile.sys is neccessary for a variety reasons more than you
may think.

Used for a variety of reasons, sure, but it is not "necessary" for all
those reasons.

I would still like someone to tell my why when I download a file from
the Internee and tell the browser I want to save the file in c:\here,
it first puts it in the temp directory and then moves it to c:\here?
As near as I can tell all it does is slow things down by using the
hard drive more than it needs to, especially on large files.

Am I the only one that finds it annoying when all I am doing is typing
code or reading a web page, windows is often thrashing the hard drive
for no apparent reason? Sure hard drive space is cheap, and I can
easily afford a large enough hard drive to store all the crap windows
wants to put on it, but I don't like to have to buy a new one because
windows needlessly used it so much that it died an early death. Even
the fastest RAID 0 array of SCSI disks is slow compared to the rest of
the computer, and hard drive ware out, so why use them for things that
you don't need to?

Chris W

 

[George Hester]

Chris this, "Am I the only one that finds it annoying when all I am doing is typing code or reading a web page, windows is often thrashing the hard drive" is partly to blame for your misconception. That does NOT happen here and has NEVER happened here. You have an application that is running with or without your knowledge that is causing this. Not storing temp files while you surf.

Sure I can give an example. If you set your RAM drive to house your personal settings which is what you are doing when you set the RAM drive to hold your temp folders, you better hope your RAM drive exists BEFORE your personal settings are set. If that is the case then I see know trouble with it. But if not you are cruising for a bruiser. This used to be done in DOS but the way Windows 2000 works I'd be surprised if it is done anymore. But I can tell you it WASN'T done because the harddrive "thrashes."

pagefile.sys is necessary. Like it or not. If you don't want it then go ahead and remove the ability of the System to write the pagefile.sys at boot to the drive by removing the permissions for it to do so. If you're lucky enough to boot successfully then just deal with the warning prompt as you think it is not "necessary." If you can't boot well then live and learn.

 

[Rick]

Is it your contention that putting the Internee cache on a RAM disk
will have no impact on the life of the hard drive?

None. Drive life is measured in hours of operation, not numbers
of reads/writes.

I would still like someone to tell my why when I download a file from
the Internee and tell the browser I want to save the file in c:\here,
it first puts it in the temp directory and then moves it to c:\here?
As near as I can tell all it does is slow things down by using the
hard drive more than it needs to, especially on large files.

The next time you're downloading a 400MB file via dialup
connection and lose power to your computer when it's 98%
complete, you'll be _very_ glad the partial download is stored
on hard disk.

Am I the only one that finds it annoying when all I am doing is typing
code or reading a web page, windows is often thrashing the hard drive
for no apparent reason?

The list of possible culprits for excessive disk activity is longer
than your arm. Spending a few minutes with Task Manager or
Process Manager (from Sysinternals) will tell you whether IE
is causing most or all of the activity. Add the I/O reads &
I/O writes columns to your display in Task Manager.

Sure hard drive space is cheap, and I can
easily afford a large enough hard drive to store all the crap windows
wants to put on it, but I don't like to have to buy a new one because
windows needlessly used it so much that it died an early death. Even
the fastest RAID 0 array of SCSI disks is slow compared to the rest of
the computer, and hard drive ware out, so why use them for things that
you don't need to?

I tried my own experiments with ramdrives and temporary
internet files several months ago and it was noticeably slower
in every case than a single Seagate 15K SCSI drive.

Rick

 

[Chris W]

None. Drive life is measured in hours of operation, not numbers
of reads/writes.

An automobile warranty is based on miles too, but any engineer will tell
you that if you take two identical cars and drive one at 55 mph solely
on the interstate and drive the other solely on the city streets of San
Francisco, one will go a lot more miles before it needs service. This
might lead you to think hours of operation might be a better number to
use. And I'm sure it would be a better indicator, but still not the
only factor. Airplanes use hours of engine time for service intervals
but any aircraft power plant mechanic will tell you that if you don't
treat that engine right (running too rich or too lean, supper cooling,
running at too high of a power setting for too long . . .) that the
engine won't make it to the rated TBO hours. To complete the analogy if
you were to take two identical hard drives and have one just sit and
spin and the other continuously read and write data in random locations
on the disk the one with the head moving all over the place will fail
first. If you don't believe me just ask an engineer at Seagate, I can
put you in contact with a few that I used to work for.

The next time you're downloading a 400MB file via dialup
connection and lose power to your computer when it's 98%
complete, you'll be _very_ glad the partial download is stored
on hard disk.

I think you misunderstand what I am trying to say. I don't want to put
files I am downloading on the ram disk I want the browser to write them
directly to their final destination with out a stop over in the temp
folder. That is the way old, and I think the new, versions of Netscape
do it.

The files I want on the RAM disk are all the millions of tiny .gif .jpg
..htm files you get when you are surfing the web. Granted if you are
using a dialup connection, it is nice to keep those files around so you
don't have to get them from the Internet over next time you visit a web
site. But I don't use dialup so keeping those files around is not of
any concern to me. It's been a long time since I used dialup but I
don't remember keeping a large Internet cache doing a lot of good on a
lot of web sites.

The list of possible culprits for excessive disk activity is longer
than your arm. Spending a few minutes with Task Manager or
Process Manager (from Sysinternals) will tell you whether IE
is causing most or all of the activity. Add the I/O reads &
I/O writes columns to your display in Task Manager.

I am very familiar with Task Manager. It just seems that when viewing
some web sites, with all their adds all the annoying flash animation,
the hard drive is being accessed a lot. I know I can block the adds and
other stuff that is responsible for most of that, but when you do, it
often blocks legitimate content, and not all adds are undesirable. Back
when I used dialup I blocked adds just because it made pages load so
much faster.

I tried my own experiments with ramdrives and temporary
internet files several months ago and it was noticeably slower
in every case than a single Seagate 15K SCSI drive.

I'd like to know the details of that test: total RAM, browser, size of
RAM disk, CPU used and you already gave the hard drive. When my x15
drive gets back from my warranty replacement I will try my own test.

Chris W

 

[Chris W]

Sure I can give an example. If you set your RAM drive to house your
personal settings which is what you are doing when you set the RAM
drive to hold your temp folders, you better hope your RAM drive
exists BEFORE your personal settings are set. If that is the case
then I see know trouble with it.

What?!! if it is putting personal settings in the temp folder on boot up
it is obviously reading them from some other place on the hard drive and
then writing them in the temp folder. What is the point of that? Why
not just read them from where ever they are stored before they get
copied to the temp folder?

The RAM disk loads soon enough for the system to put pagefile.sys on it
so I guess that is soon enough to save whatever personal settings get
put in temp to be there. BTW I currently have the temp and tmp folder
on a hard disk because my RAM disk software won't let me make one big
enough to store large downloads, so I looked in the temp folder and
didn't see any files that contained personal settings.

pagefile.sys is necessary. Like it or not. If you don't want it
then go ahead and remove the ability of the System to write the
pagefile.sys at boot to the drive by removing the permissions for it
to do so. If you're lucky enough to boot successfully then just deal
with the warning prompt as you think it is not "necessary." If you
can't boot well then live and learn.

Just because the software has to have it to work right, doesn't mean it
is necessary, it just means that's the way it does it, because it is not
set up to do it right. Your suggestion to change the permissions to
prevent the system from writing pagefile.sys is ridiculous, all you have
to do is set the page file size to 0 from the advanced tab of the My
Computer Properties dialog. It gives a warning that the page file is
too small when you reboot but it works fine till you run some stupid
program, that for whatever idiotic reason, refuses to run with out a
swap file. I ran NT4.0 that way for a long time till I tried to install
a program that refused to install unless I had a swap file so I set it
to 2 meg and it worked fine. You just don't have any fall back when you
have so many applications running that you run out of memory. But all
you have to do then is close some programs which is also what happens if
you run out of swap file space.

Chris W

 

[George Hester]

Chris you are the NT expert here I see. More power to you. Take it easy.