▷ Ramdisk what is and how to create one in windows

Today we are going to see what a RAMDISK is and how to create it in our Windows 10 operating system. Currently it is quite common to have quite large RAM memory values ​​in our equipment and that is why we are going to see how to make better use of this amount of memory to create a super fast hard disk in our equipment.

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If you are a user who does not usually play games frequently or has so much memory installed on your computer that you always have it at 10% capacity, it is an excellent option to test the operation of a RAMDISK on it. You can load programs contained in it super fast, achieving amazing performance.

What is a RAMDISK

A RAMDISK is simply the use of part of a RAM memory as its is a hard drive. So, if we create a RAMDISK we will be creating a virtual hard disk in our equipment by using part of the available storage, and not used by our RAM memory modules.

This virtual hard disk will be infinitely faster than any other, like a normal SSD and, of course, a mechanical hard disk, on the order of 200 times faster than the latter. Thanks to this technique we will use the RAM memory that always remains in our equipment in case of having large quantities such as 32 or 64 GB.

But not only do we need as much RAM, just having 8 GB we can create a RAMDISK of for example 4 GB to use when we are not using games or programs that consume more than 4 GB of RAM from our computer. The great advantage of a RAMDISK is that we can create and destroy it easily and quickly. We must also bear in mind that we are storing information in RAM, so when we turn off our equipment, all the information will be erased, since RAM is volatile storage.

The latter we can avoid if, before turning off our equipment, we store all the information on our normal and current hard disk.

One of the most significant utilities of using RAMDISK is to dedicate it to 4K video editing, due to the large use of hard disk and the need for high transfer rates for smooth playback and encoding.

How to create a RAMDISK in Windows 10

Now let's get down to work to create a RAMDISK on our computer. Also, then we will test its performance to see what we can achieve with it.

We are going to use a free software for creating this, called ImDisk Toolkit. This can be downloaded directly from the Sourceforge page freely. We have carried out the tests with the 64-bit version, in its build 2.0.9

Well, once downloaded, we will proceed to install it.

The process is very simple, we leave the default values ​​on the start screen of the wizard and click " Install ". The installation takes less time than a rooster crows. Now we will have obtained 3 shortcuts on our desktop.

We are going to click on the one with the title “ Configure RAMDISK ”. On the first screen that appears, we are located on the " Basic " tab to choose the storage quantity values, drive letter to create, file system and other options such as the possibility of launching it when we start our computer.

Now we are located on the " Advanced " tab where we will have different configuration options:

• Cluster size and drive label Quickly shape and enable NFTS compression, which is not required Use a mount point - to place the mount point of the virtual hard drive in a certain location.

In the " Data " tab we can choose the content of a folder so that it is directly loaded on the virtual hard disk.

An important option is "Synchronize when shutting down the system." Thanks to this option, when we turn off the system or disassemble the unit, the content of this is stored in the chosen place on our hard drive. In this way we will not lose the information that we have stored in it.

Once we have all the configuration according to our taste, we will click on " Accept " so that the RAMDISK is created in our system. Automatically we will open a properties window as if it were a normal hard drive. Also, if we go to " This team " we will see it as if it were a normal hard drive

We see that the chosen memory is being used right now as a hard disk, so we will not be able to have it while we are using it.

Obviously we can use this unit in a normal and current way, and even install programs within it.

We are going to perform a performance test to see what we get through CristalDiskMark. When opening it we will have to select our new unit to submit it to the benchmark tests

As we see the results are impressive. In addition, depending on what RAM we have in our equipment and how often it works, we will obtain measures much faster than those of our example.

Unmount a RAMDISK

When we are tired of using the RAMDISK, all we have to do is click again on " Configure RAMDISK " and click on the " unmount " button to remove the drive

It will ask us before confirming the changes if we want to store the content that the RAMDISK has. We can choose to save them or not.

As you can see, creating a RAMDISK is a fairly simple and very useful procedure, due to the speeds that we achieve.

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What do you think of this option? What would you use it for? Write us in the comments.