Running WinXP in RAM...?

[swarm]

Anyone ever give this a shot? If not for anything practical, then just for
S/G's?

I want to try it with Win98 and even have some real-world, practical,
intentions that it would be useful for.

Certaintly should be possible to also shave XP down small enough to even
room for a few applications.

Booting would be s l o w, but once its up incredible.

 

[Guest]

Depending on the amount of RAM installed, your system is
already doing that at boot time. If you have about 2 gigs of
RAM installed almost all your apps including Windows will be
in RAM and very little use of your harddrive except to activate
the apps. Eventually in the future, harddrives (disks) will
become obsolete and replaced by memory cores such as RAM.
--
XP - WNP
Today is the first day of the
rest of your life.
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rate it below.

 

[Tim Slattery]

Eventually in the future, harddrives (disks) will
become obsolete and replaced by memory cores such as RAM.

I've gotta wonder about that. You can get hundreds of GB for a couple
of hundred dollars now. Terabyte disks are being sold already. Disk
storage breakthroughs are being announced all the time. I expect that
disk storage will remain far cheaper per unit than semiconductor RAM
for quite a while yet.

 

[swarm]

Depending on the amount of RAM installed, your system is
already doing that at boot time. If you have about 2 gigs of
RAM installed almost all your apps including Windows will be
in RAM and very little use of your harddrive except to activate
the apps.

Got a machine here with 4GB.

This is the sequence I have in mind:

Bootloader --> Loads a RAM disk off a HDD and initializes --> Copies an
entire partition off a HDD onto the RAM disk --> Begins boot sequence on the
RAM disk.

Consider it just an entire preload...

Eventually in the future, harddrives (disks) will become obsolete
and replaced by memory cores such as RAM.

Eventually, yes, but solid state drives have been "going to make mechanical
drives obsolete" for two decades already..

 

[Bob I]

Got a machine here with 4GB.

This is the sequence I have in mind:

Bootloader --> Loads a RAM disk off a HDD and initializes --> Copies an
entire partition off a HDD onto the RAM disk --> Begins boot sequence on the
RAM disk.

Consider it just an entire preload...




Eventually, yes, but solid state drives have been "going to make mechanical
drives obsolete" for two decades already..

Humm, a terabyte of RAM! Who's buying? That's 1024 1GB sticks!

 

[swarm]

Humm, a terabyte of RAM! Who's buying? That's 1024 1GB sticks!

Well, I spent $80-something on a 64KB memory upgrade kit once in the
early-mid 80's.

A kit was exactly that -- a kit. It came with the chips, ZIF sockets (for
future convenience), and a few capacitors.

Upgrading meant de-soldering the old chips out, soldering the new ones (or
ZIF sockets) in, and strapping the caps (they were to de-glitch some timing
issue).

Being nostalgic and playing with numbers.....

The cost "then" of 4GB and the leap:

-----------
$80/64KB = $1.25/KB

$1.25K * 1024 = $1,280/MB

$1280MB * 1024 = $1,310,720/GB

* 4GB = $5,242,880

Also:

4GB = 4,194,304 KB
4194304/64 = 65536 (4GB = 65,536 times bigger than the 64K upgrade)

 

[Tim Slattery]

Humm, a terabyte of RAM! Who's buying? That's 1024 1GB sticks!

In the '80s we bought RAM in 1MB sticks. A gigabyte would be 1024 of
those RAM sticks. Who could possible put a gigabyte in their computer?

 

[Bob I]

In the '80s we bought RAM in 1MB sticks. A gigabyte would be 1024 of
those RAM sticks. Who could possible put a gigabyte in their computer?

I was refering to the relative expense, harddrives are many orders less
expensive than RAM. Was that way 20 years ago, is today and will be 20
years in the future.

 

[Tim Slattery]

I was refering to the relative expense, harddrives are many orders less
expensive than RAM. Was that way 20 years ago, is today and will be 20
years in the future.

Absolutely, no argument there.

 

[Eric]

I was refering to the relative expense, harddrives are many orders less
expensive than RAM. Was that way 20 years ago, is today and will be 20
years in the future.

At the rate they're going, hard drives as we know them may be obsolete in 20
years, so they may be as cheap or as impossible to find as 3.5" disks
already are today. With the development of affordable CD-RW drives, at
least one major manufacturer of 3.5" disks has stopped making them. Either
a terabyte of hard drive will become affordable, or hard drives will be
replaced by something faster and more efficient. The Star Trek smart
computer is not far off.

 

[swarm]

At the rate they're going, hard drives as we know them may be obsolete in
20 years, so they may be as cheap or as impossible to find as 3.5" disks
already are today. With the development of affordable CD-RW drives, at
least one major manufacturer of 3.5" disks has stopped making them.
Either a terabyte of hard drive will become affordable, or hard drives
will be replaced by something faster and more efficient. The Star Trek
smart computer is not far off.

Fast access, solid state, storage devices have been "just around the corner"
for decades now.

IBM talked about hologram storage in the 80's, the 90's was full of MRAM
speculation, etc.

It'll come, eventually, but I still don't see mechanical drives going
anywhere.

As others have said, mechanical drives simply will (for a long time to come)
provide more storage for less cost.

....but, thats not the main reason why I see them staying. The main factor I
see them staying for around is because of BLOAT.

When we have our 1TB RAM machine, programs will just be bloated out to
require 100GB to run. The cycle continues, system RAM remains for execution
of programs and not storage.

If the bloat could be checked, then system and storage memory could unite.
(Keep mechanical drives around for media though. I.e., video.)

I think it could be done now, to an extent, without Star Trek gadetry. The
first thing on the "to do" list is make system RAM non-volatile. Its
possible with today's hardware without Spock getting involved. Simply use a
rechargable lithium battery for system RAM!

 

[swarm]

Anyone ever give this a shot? If not for anything practical, then just
for S/G's?

I want to try it with Win98 and even have some real-world, practical,
intentions that it would be useful for.

Certaintly should be possible to also shave XP down small enough to even
room for a few applications.

Booting would be s l o w, but once its up incredible.

To answer my own post:

I'm now on my way to getting a streamlined Win98 to run in RAM.

I found a method using an Isolinux boot CD (Bart's CD created) and
RamdiskNT.

Still in the process of streamlining Win98 down and choosing which apps to
include, but the path ahead looks clear.

Google keyboard above to find references on the web...

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

At the rate they're going, hard drives as we know them may be
obsolete in 20 years,

I'm with you. I think it's very likely that today's mechanical hard drives
will soon be replaced by solid state devices. The only question in my mind
is how soon is "soon." But I think almost certainly within 20 years.

Either a terabyte of hard drive will
become affordable,

It already is. Read here
http://www.newsfactor.com/news/Hitachi-Ready-To-Launch-1-TB-Drive/story.xhtml?story_id=0110014KRW07
or http://tinyurl.com/yg6k27

for information on a 1TB drive about to be sold for $399 US.