Latest computers are coming with more and more RAM. Some of the computers today have as much as 8 GB RAM. Apparently, Windows does not use all of this RAM unless you are running a resource hungry program like a computer game or graphics editor etc. You can make use of this unused RAM to get faster RAM disks on your PC. RAM disks are very high performance disks compared to hard disks. SoftPerfect RAMDisk can help you create a number of RAM disks on your Windows PC.
SoftPerfect RAMDisk is a free software for Windows that allows you to create many RAM disks of different types. You can create removable, wipe, compressed or persistent type of RAM disks. You can download SoftPerfect RAMDisk from the SoftPerfect website. It supports both the 32 and 64 bit editions of Windows XP, 2003, 2008, Vista, 7 and 8. After the installation, you can access it from its Start Menu shortcut.
To create a RAM disk, click on the green colored plus button in the toolbar. This would open a new dialog where you can specify the parameters and settings for the new RAM disk. You can set the disk size, choose an image (to save the contents), drive letter, mounting options (mounting the drive as removable, wipe on dismount, for current user only etc.). You can also set the filesystem to be either RAW, NTFS, FAT or FAT32.
To mount a RAM disk, select it in the SoftPerfect RAMDisk window and click on the mount icon in the toolbar. After you have mounted a RAM disk, it can be accessed just like any other hard disk from Windows Explorer. If later you want to unmount a RAM disk, then you can select it from the SoftPerfect RAMDisk window and click on the unmount icon in the toolbar.
In the settings for SoftPerfect RAMDisk, which you can access from the menubar (Tools → Settings), you can set it to automatically launch at startup, allow all users to eject RAM disks in Windows Explorer, global drive icons for all the users and show system tray icon.
SoftPerfect RAMDisk is a free high-performance RAM disk app that allows you to have a disk on your computer entirely stored in its RAM. As the RAM memory is much faster than the hard disks, the RAM disks created are much faster. If you have an SSD (solid state disk), then using a RAM disk can increase its life because some of the write/read operations are performed on the RAM disk.
You can download SoftPerfect RAMDisk from http://www.softperfect.com/products/ramdisk/.
Just got a license for this tool. So it’s early days. But I went through the whole 30 days of trial and so far it’s been excellent.