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![]() | On 18 February 2013, it was proposed that this article be moved to RAM disk. The result of the discussion was no consensus. |
I am curious; doesn't Gentoo Linux also grow and shrink /tmp as necessary? Isn't that in fact a usual feature of source-based distros? -- Maru Dubshinki
A RAM drive is a physical piece of solid state hardware that behaves like a ordinary hard drive in most respects but delivers far superior performance regarding access time and thru put. What you refer to in this wiki is a Virtual RAM Drive where the storage device is emulated in system memory. A virtual RAM drive achieves that same effect as a RAM drive but with a few limitations, namely, virtual RAM drives are limited in capacity to your system memory and they utilize system CPU time when accessing data. The system memory limitation is largely due to the fact that many operating systems simply do not support large quantities of system memory (not large enough for big RAM drives). Windows vista as an example limits system memory to 8GB with the high end of the OS release. Physical RAM drives on the other hand such as the HyperDrive IV and GigaByte I-RAM have their own RAM on board and the memory limits are dependant on the manufacture. Capacities can vary between 4GB and 16GB. It’s important to note, since most RAM drives act identically to normal hard drives, that you can place RAM drives into a RAID configuration in order to extend the space available or protect data with mirroring. Enhancements in data thru put should not be expected in a RAM drive RAID configuration because the data bottle neck for RAM drives is the BUS architecture and not the speed of the drives. Another complication with RAM drives is the manor in which they retain data. When the system is shut down or when a power outage occurs RAM normally loses all stored data because RAM must be continually powered to hold data. Manufactures of RAM Drives utilize a battery that can keep the memory active but most systems can not keep memory active for more than 16 hours without power. It is recommended by some professionals that you utilize a UPS system with such system configurations to lower the chances of data loss. Another important safety tip for those using RAM drives is to regularly copy the RAM drive image to a local magnetic hard drive particularly before shutting down the system. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.167.128.113 ( talk • contribs) 10:40, 31 July 2007
http://www.eniro.se/cgi-bin/popularimeter.cgi?kl=sv&q1=%22RAM+disk%22&q2=RAM-disk&q3=RAMdisk&q4=RAM-drive&q5=%22RAM+drive%22&what=web&search=S%F6kningen+p%E5g%E5r... I think "RAM-disk" seems to be the most widely used name. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Frap ( talk • contribs) 2006-01-27
The article currently uses "RAM drive" and labels "RAM disk" as being incorrect. This is false, but more importantly, original research. See Google ngrams for "ram disk,ram drive" and "ramdisk,ramdrive" for evidence that "ram disk" or "ramdisk" is a lot more common. As an encyclopaedia, we have no business deciding what is "factually correct" or not. (Though, for the record, both would be incorrect by Ekerazha's reasoning, as a RAM disk is typically a mount point, and neither a disk or a drive.) The page should be moved to "RAM disk", but I am not able to do this myself as I have not been autoconfirmed yet. I would appreciate it someone else could do it, and fix up the references to the name in the article itself. Noah Slater ( talk) 21:13, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
The Article and all the links seem very much Linux-centric. I don't have a problem with that, (although I came here specifically to learn about the current status of Ramdisks in Windows, so I think it would be nice to include that also) but it should be made clear in the article that most of that which is said applies only to a certain kind of OS.-- BjKa 09:53, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
This article contains no references to sources... Sources showing appropriate info needs to be added. 71.178.208.209 ( talk) 01:12, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
In what way are most PCs "limited to 2GB of RAM"? The article provides no context for this statement. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.237.182.119 ( talk) 19:49, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
The following paragraph was moved from the SSD article because it gets into more detail than is covered for related technologies. There were no sources stated, so they should be checked before being considered as added into the RAM disk article here (likely in the historical section).
Music Sorter ( talk) 22:36, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Should we be including software at the end of the article? Would any non-biased readers find it advantageous to have direct links to known freeware, seeing as the use of a RAMDisk could provide the user with more knowledge of the subject? -- Wmw71190 ( talk) 13:12, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
The result of the proposal was no consensus. -- BDD ( talk) 00:51, 5 March 2013 (UTC) ( non-admin closure)
RAM drive → RAM disk – proposed in 2006, sporadic discussion in 2012, then revived in February 2013 relisted -- Mike Cline ( talk) 19:53, 26 February 2013 (UTC) Closeapple ( talk) 00:03, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
I think that, at least conceptually, paging is the opposite of RAM drive. So paging (and virtual memory) should appear at least in "See also". -- Edupedro ( talk) 08:08, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. I'm not an expert in CS and my ideas about the concepts are basic (and English is not my native language). In that superficial knowledge those concepts seem to be opposite. But now, with your explanations, not so much. By the way, above TD seems to be an abbreviation of Thermodynamics but in TD the second doesn't appear. I see that the first is used in more web sites as an abbreviation of the second, so it could be added to the article. Regards, Edupedro ( talk) 10:56, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
I believe versions of MVS pre-XA did approximately this. Real storage above 16mb was used for paging. I'm not familiar with the details but I think the system was unable to use this storage as conventional memory. Peter Flass ( talk) 21:01, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
A possibly less twisted analogous-abstraction might be:
So, one major use of RAM drives today is for servers for VPN's to better protect privacy. In theory, unlike a conventional hard drive, deleted files on a RAM drive shouldn't be recoverable. This use for VPN servers is probably their most common use today. CessnaMan1989 ( talk) 16:43, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
There are many current and relatively recent issues with implementing modern RAM drives. One issue is that many modern operating systems, especially Windows, use a hybrid-boot feature, which, long story short, sometimes results in temporary storage from a previous session actually persisting into the next session once the computer is turned back on. This has effected how RAM drives are implemented now.
Another, somewhat related issue, issue that most functional RAM drives today are actually sections of RAM that are partitioned by software such as SoftPerfect to be virtual disks or functional RAM drives, which make the implementation entirely dependent of the software used. Plus, some computer architectures that come from FPGA's actually use partitioned portions of hard disk to be the RAM drive, which I admit is unusual, but it does exist. What sort of sources should I cite to include these kinds of issues in the article? CessnaMan1989 ( talk) 16:53, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
RAM drive article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | On 18 February 2013, it was proposed that this article be moved to RAM disk. The result of the discussion was no consensus. |
I am curious; doesn't Gentoo Linux also grow and shrink /tmp as necessary? Isn't that in fact a usual feature of source-based distros? -- Maru Dubshinki
A RAM drive is a physical piece of solid state hardware that behaves like a ordinary hard drive in most respects but delivers far superior performance regarding access time and thru put. What you refer to in this wiki is a Virtual RAM Drive where the storage device is emulated in system memory. A virtual RAM drive achieves that same effect as a RAM drive but with a few limitations, namely, virtual RAM drives are limited in capacity to your system memory and they utilize system CPU time when accessing data. The system memory limitation is largely due to the fact that many operating systems simply do not support large quantities of system memory (not large enough for big RAM drives). Windows vista as an example limits system memory to 8GB with the high end of the OS release. Physical RAM drives on the other hand such as the HyperDrive IV and GigaByte I-RAM have their own RAM on board and the memory limits are dependant on the manufacture. Capacities can vary between 4GB and 16GB. It’s important to note, since most RAM drives act identically to normal hard drives, that you can place RAM drives into a RAID configuration in order to extend the space available or protect data with mirroring. Enhancements in data thru put should not be expected in a RAM drive RAID configuration because the data bottle neck for RAM drives is the BUS architecture and not the speed of the drives. Another complication with RAM drives is the manor in which they retain data. When the system is shut down or when a power outage occurs RAM normally loses all stored data because RAM must be continually powered to hold data. Manufactures of RAM Drives utilize a battery that can keep the memory active but most systems can not keep memory active for more than 16 hours without power. It is recommended by some professionals that you utilize a UPS system with such system configurations to lower the chances of data loss. Another important safety tip for those using RAM drives is to regularly copy the RAM drive image to a local magnetic hard drive particularly before shutting down the system. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.167.128.113 ( talk • contribs) 10:40, 31 July 2007
http://www.eniro.se/cgi-bin/popularimeter.cgi?kl=sv&q1=%22RAM+disk%22&q2=RAM-disk&q3=RAMdisk&q4=RAM-drive&q5=%22RAM+drive%22&what=web&search=S%F6kningen+p%E5g%E5r... I think "RAM-disk" seems to be the most widely used name. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Frap ( talk • contribs) 2006-01-27
The article currently uses "RAM drive" and labels "RAM disk" as being incorrect. This is false, but more importantly, original research. See Google ngrams for "ram disk,ram drive" and "ramdisk,ramdrive" for evidence that "ram disk" or "ramdisk" is a lot more common. As an encyclopaedia, we have no business deciding what is "factually correct" or not. (Though, for the record, both would be incorrect by Ekerazha's reasoning, as a RAM disk is typically a mount point, and neither a disk or a drive.) The page should be moved to "RAM disk", but I am not able to do this myself as I have not been autoconfirmed yet. I would appreciate it someone else could do it, and fix up the references to the name in the article itself. Noah Slater ( talk) 21:13, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
The Article and all the links seem very much Linux-centric. I don't have a problem with that, (although I came here specifically to learn about the current status of Ramdisks in Windows, so I think it would be nice to include that also) but it should be made clear in the article that most of that which is said applies only to a certain kind of OS.-- BjKa 09:53, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
This article contains no references to sources... Sources showing appropriate info needs to be added. 71.178.208.209 ( talk) 01:12, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
In what way are most PCs "limited to 2GB of RAM"? The article provides no context for this statement. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.237.182.119 ( talk) 19:49, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
The following paragraph was moved from the SSD article because it gets into more detail than is covered for related technologies. There were no sources stated, so they should be checked before being considered as added into the RAM disk article here (likely in the historical section).
Music Sorter ( talk) 22:36, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Should we be including software at the end of the article? Would any non-biased readers find it advantageous to have direct links to known freeware, seeing as the use of a RAMDisk could provide the user with more knowledge of the subject? -- Wmw71190 ( talk) 13:12, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
The result of the proposal was no consensus. -- BDD ( talk) 00:51, 5 March 2013 (UTC) ( non-admin closure)
RAM drive → RAM disk – proposed in 2006, sporadic discussion in 2012, then revived in February 2013 relisted -- Mike Cline ( talk) 19:53, 26 February 2013 (UTC) Closeapple ( talk) 00:03, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
I think that, at least conceptually, paging is the opposite of RAM drive. So paging (and virtual memory) should appear at least in "See also". -- Edupedro ( talk) 08:08, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. I'm not an expert in CS and my ideas about the concepts are basic (and English is not my native language). In that superficial knowledge those concepts seem to be opposite. But now, with your explanations, not so much. By the way, above TD seems to be an abbreviation of Thermodynamics but in TD the second doesn't appear. I see that the first is used in more web sites as an abbreviation of the second, so it could be added to the article. Regards, Edupedro ( talk) 10:56, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
I believe versions of MVS pre-XA did approximately this. Real storage above 16mb was used for paging. I'm not familiar with the details but I think the system was unable to use this storage as conventional memory. Peter Flass ( talk) 21:01, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
A possibly less twisted analogous-abstraction might be:
So, one major use of RAM drives today is for servers for VPN's to better protect privacy. In theory, unlike a conventional hard drive, deleted files on a RAM drive shouldn't be recoverable. This use for VPN servers is probably their most common use today. CessnaMan1989 ( talk) 16:43, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
There are many current and relatively recent issues with implementing modern RAM drives. One issue is that many modern operating systems, especially Windows, use a hybrid-boot feature, which, long story short, sometimes results in temporary storage from a previous session actually persisting into the next session once the computer is turned back on. This has effected how RAM drives are implemented now.
Another, somewhat related issue, issue that most functional RAM drives today are actually sections of RAM that are partitioned by software such as SoftPerfect to be virtual disks or functional RAM drives, which make the implementation entirely dependent of the software used. Plus, some computer architectures that come from FPGA's actually use partitioned portions of hard disk to be the RAM drive, which I admit is unusual, but it does exist. What sort of sources should I cite to include these kinds of issues in the article? CessnaMan1989 ( talk) 16:53, 4 November 2021 (UTC)