RAMDisk
License: Free & 2 paid versions Last Reviewed: 2009-05-29
Version: 5.3.1.11 – Released: 2009-04-17 Windows: 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, 7
File Size: 720 KB
“A RAMDisk acts as a virtual drive on your system. It allows you to create directories, copy files to and from it, etc…. The data however is not written onto a hard disk, but remains purely stored into a particular part of your RAM memory. Hard disks have mechanical parts that allow to seek to a particular position on the magnetic storage media and to read/write data. This make them relative lazy. A RAMDisk can read and write the same data to upon 30-60 times faster than a hard disk! However, the data stored in your RAM is ‘volatile’ : it disappears when you cut off the power to the RAM memory, with other words, if you turn off your system. This applies to the content of the RAMDisk too!
“The Enterprise Evaluation, Lite and (full) versions are freely available and can be downloaded from the links within the table below. The versions are full functional , but they may however popup randomly a ‘nasty’ reminder message. They may display a ‘Fatal application exit’ message, although there is nothing ‘fatal’ going on and you can continue your work without any fear at all. On Vista 32-bit and on ALL 64-bit OS versions , the evaluation version will expire on June 1st 2008.”
Anchor Link SoftPerfect RAM Disk
License: Freeware Last Reviewed: 2012-11-21
Version: 3.3.3 – Released: 2012-11-21 Windows: XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, 7, 8
File Size: 2.0 MB Both 32- and 64-bit compatible
“SoftPerfect RAM Disk is a free high-performance RAM disk application that lets you have a disk on your computer entirely stored in the memory. The program creates a virtual disk residing in the computer RAM accessible in Windows Explorer and other applications, allowing you to store any temporary information on this disk. Furthermore, Windows can be configured to use the disk for temporary files, so the system and most applications will use the fast in-memory disk for temporary data. As Windows and third-party applications often create a large number of temporary files for a short time only, using a RAM disk will extend your hard disk’s life by sparing it from excessive reading and writing.”
Anchor Link Speed Up Load Times
Information Only Last Reviewed: 2010-03-21
Author: Patrick Norton
“Conventional wisdom says that if you want to load apps or access data more quickly, you should buy a faster hard drive. But with 1GB sticks of RAM getting cheaper, now is a good time to start thinking about using a RAM disk to speed things up. The concept behind the RAM disk is simple. RAM moves data heaps faster than any hard drive, so why not run software that creates a virtual disk in your system RAM?”
Anchor Link SuperSpeed RamDisk
License: Shareware Last Reviewed: 2012-04-10
Version: 11.6.795 – Released: 2012-04-10 Windows: XP, Vista, 7
File Size: 10.3 MB Both 32- and 64-bit versions
“SuperSpeed offers two high-performance RAM disk products: RamDisk and RamDisk Plus. These products create virtual disks from the server’s system memory (RAM). Although in many respects a virtual disk behaves like a physical hard disk, in one key area it does not: it is much, much faster, up to 50x faster or more. Like a physical disk, a RAM disk can be assigned a drive letter and contain a file system (including NTFS with compression). Applications can copy, move and delete files on it. Additionally, it can be shared, so other computers can access it on a network.
“RamDisk supports a single RAM disk with no backup capability. RamDisk Plus adds multiple disk support, system page file support, and a versatile disk image backup facility. Its patent-pending technology adds the ability to manually save the RAM disk’s contents, or automatically save the contents when the server is shutdown. This feature ensures that service and application data stored on the RAM disk can be preserved between system restarts. During the subsequent system start-up, the disk’s image is automatically loaded.”
Anchor Link Winsoft RamDisk
License: Shareware Last Reviewed: 2012-03-12
Version: 3.0 – Released: 2012-01-06 Windows: XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, 7
File Size: 7 MB Both 32- and 64-bit versions
“Fast disk in RAM memory for Windows 2000 and Windows XP. RamDisk uses 64-bit addressing and Windows Address Windowing Extensions (AWE) technology, so its max size is limited by Windows and available physical memory only. NTFS filesystem is supported on Windows 2000 and FAT/FAT32 filesystems on Windows XP.”