George SkarbekMay 2010

What drives?There are three types of virtual drives that

can help. They are:A mapped network driveVirtual CD/DVD driveRAM drive

The RAM drives are generally the most beneficial in terms of improving performance

Virtual CD drives

Mapped network drivesIn a home network often the security on the PCs

prevents you to connect to the other PC. From Windows Explorer when clicking on Network and then your other PC you may receive Access Denied or a similar message. However, you should be able to link to it from DOS. The command is:

Net use x: \\PC_Name\Share_name\share_name /User:OtherPC-user (this is all typed on one line)

The you have to enter the password and you will have drive x

Why RAM drives?This unused memory can be used to improve

productivity by creating a RAM drive which appears as a physical drive that is much faster than a conventional hard disk. My 2 year old computer has a transfer speed of 195 MB/Sec

There is no latency as you do not have to wait for the drive’s sector to move over the read/write head and there is no seek time either.

Why RAM drives?On all computers with 4 GB RAM and over

running a 32 bit operating system, memory over about 3.3 GB is not used due to reserved memory for the BIOS. Below is the worst that I have seen.

Why RAM drives?Below is another representation from the

Windows 7 Resource Monitor (via Task Manager) showing that 770 MB is reserved and not available to the operating system.

HowThe RAM drive can be used as Ready Boost

by Vista and Win 7You can use the RAM drive for testing

softwareWhen sharing folders using a RAM drive can

be more secure in case a hacker gets in because drive C will not be accessible

Use it for Temp files In all versions of Windows using RAM drive for the

temp files gives the following benefits: There is no contention on the read/write heads when

temp files are created, such as when opening Word, very much faster file access, no cleaning up required as all contents are lost on a re-

boot, saves space and wear on drive C, reduces fragmentation on drive C, saves time and disk space when doing an image backup

as junk files are not backed up. I have seen well over 10,000+ files in the Temp folders (not the Temp Internet folders)

Change two environment variables

How do you get one?Use Google

Possible problemsOnly possible drawback is the temp folder filling

if the computer is never re-booted or if installing some massive program such as Nero or CS5 with all options. Fix by temporarily using a hard drive for temp files

Many free RAM drive programs do not support drives over 64 MB in Windows 7 but at least one does. See: http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk

Acronis 10 Home on an XP computer failed to install with this RAM drive running

Possible installation problemFor some RAM drives, to install you must run

HDWWIZ from DOS as Windows 7 New Hardware Wizard is not available from the Control Panel but will appear just by plugging the new device into your computer.This fails when you need to run software to install a virtual RAM drive.

Demo and Questions