ImDisk: Create a 10 GB/s RAM Disk on Windows 10

Do you want to create an ultra fast drive that is even faster than your SSD drive?

Do you want to edit some large databases or edit videos at the highest speed?

The solution is to create a RAM Disk!

The thing about RAM Disks is that they use (as their name indicate) RAM as a storage medium to do work at speeds we can’t achieve with any type of storage in the market. Simply because RAM is so quick, but in the downside RAM is cleared after each restart. It’s very helpful especially if you want to do big tasks or turn your PC into the fastest file Reader/Writer in the network and perform some really complicated tasks.

You can manipulate large and advanced databases, process lot of data and render videos faster using a RAM Disk.

In this article you will discover how to create a RAM Disk using ImDisk. You will also see the differences of speed between the HDD, SSD and RAM Disk drives.

Create Your Own RAM Disk on Windows

1. What is a RAM Disk?

RAM Disks are logical storage volumes created from a PC’s RAM.

RAM is the ultra-fast storage medium that a PC makes use of to briefly transfer data whereas in use, dramatically rushing up the general efficiency of a system. As a result of RAM is so quick, the logical drives we will create in RAM function at a number of instances the velocity of even the quickest fashionable stable state and mechanical exhausting drives.

First, RAM is unstable, or non-persistent, storage, which signifies that any data saved in RAM is misplaced when the RAM loses energy. This contrasts with conventional SSD and HDD drives, that are non-volatile, or persistent, technique of storage. These storage strategies retain the info written to them when the ability is misplaced, corresponding to when the pc shuts down or when there’s a energy outage. Which means that something you retailer in a RAM Disk can be misplaced while you reboot the pc, or if there’s an sudden lack of energy. Subsequently, it’s vital to make frequent backups of the contents of your RAM Disk, and to at all times understand that the info on the disk might be misplaced at any time.

Second, in comparison with SSD and HDD drives, RAM is comparatively costly and restricted. Whereas an HDD drive can easily attain 4TB in storage space at a value of about $0.03 per gigabyte, the utmost quantity of RAM supported by most shopper computer systems is often 32GB or 64GB, at a a lot steeper value of round $10 per gigabyte. These limitations, coupled with the truth that you may assign all of your system’s RAM to a RAM Disk, signifies that your logical RAM Disks can be comparatively small, probably no bigger than eight to 16GB for many methods. If these limitations are acceptable, nonetheless, an extremely quick drive awaits you.

How to Create a RAM Disk using ImDisk on Windows

There are various programs and utilities that allow you to create a RAM Disk on Windows, however a lot of them are paid industrial apps or are lacking key options. A strong and free possibility we suggest known as ImDisk. Though ImDisk consists of many options, corresponding to the flexibility to mount and handle digital disks, it additionally acts as an excellent easy interface for configuring and creating RAM Disks.

To get began, first download ImDisk and run the installer.

By default, the installer will place three icons in your desktop. When it’s completed, open the icon that claims “RamDisk Configuration“.

ImDisk gives a useful user interface for configuring your RAM Disks. First, choose a dimension for the disk; we’re utilizing 1GB in our instance. You’ll be able to then select the drive letter to which your RAM Disk will mount, and choose which file system you’d like to make use of.

As we said earlier in this tutorial, RAM Disks are cleared after a reboot, but you can let the program save the RAM Disk during Reboot, you should choose “Launch at Windows Startup” to allow the program to run at Startup.

You can Extend the size of the RAMDisk (or format it) using the ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver available on your Desktop.

To test compare and test the speeds of each drive, I have on my computer 3 drives, an SSD C:, HDD E: and a RamDisk R:. I will use the program CrystalDiskMark to run some bench-marking.

RAM Disk Benchmarks

I have an i7-6700k CPU 4Ghz and 8Go DDR4 RAM and here are the results of Read/Write speeds benchmarks of all three disks.

We can see clearly that the RamDisk reached the 10GB/s very easily, the SSD is doing well but the HDD is very slow… as expected.

When you are done with your work and want to remove the RAM Disk, you may delete it by heading again to the ImDisk software and click “Unmount” on the main tab. If you have data on the disk, ImDisk will provide an image of the disk for you, that you can later restore and re-mount.

With a super-simple setup and configuration because of the free ImDisk utility, nearly anybody can get pleasure from experimenting with this superior speed disk.

I hope this tutorial helped you and provided some value, don’t forget to share with your friends.

If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment down below, thank you!