GFLPraxis said:
I don't see why it is stupid.
Obviously.
GFLPraxis said:
It gives you the ability to shove an entire application, such as a game, into the RAM disk temporarily, meaning that as long as you are running that game off the RAM disk you have virtually no load times. RAM access is FAR faster than hard drive access, so if you have an app that is going to be loading stuff constantly, you can temporarily shove it into the RAM disk. When you're done using it, you delete it off the RAM disk.
We understand the "theory." However, there is a very large difference between "theory" and practice, as I will explain below.
GFLPraxis said:
My position on this is clear.
GFLPraxis said:
Your idea that Virtual Memory is a better idea than RAM is laughable, however. Compare hard drive access speeds to RAM access speeds before you try to argue with me.
Here you totally and completely misunderstood my point. I never said that virtual memory is better than RAM. In fact, one of the reasons that RAM disk is stupid is that RAM is better than virtual memory.
RAM disk is an idea that was in vogue back in the days of MS-DOS and Macintosh System 6. It was appropriate to an era when the OS could address limited amounts of memory. Hard disks were by no means universal. If your computer had one, it was much slower than they are today. It was an era of single-tasking, single-user OSes. And it was an era when the user controlled the memory allocation for each application on his or her computer.
Until the release of the Mac IIfx, the System 6 could not address more than 8 MB RAM. If you installed more than 8 MB RAM on your computer, it could be addressed only as RAM disk. MS-DOS had several plateaus of limitations-- 64 KB, 640 KB, and 1 MB, to name the three most important. One of the most obvious ways to use more than 1 MB RAM was to use the extra RAM as RAM disk. This is not to say that you could not use RAM if you had less than 1 MB RAM. You just needed to ensure than you RAM disk allowed your application to run. This was possible because the user controlled the use of RAM.
We live in a different era today. We run preemptive multi-user, multitasking, operating systems with virtual memory. The OS controls memory allocations rather than the user. We have high-capacity fast hard disks. We have a lot more RAM installed in our computers. But no matter how much RAM we install, many of us believe that we don't have enough.
Now this is where the whole concept of a RAM disk shows its age: First, when an application in RAM disk executes, there are two copies of the application in RAM. One copy is in executeable memory; a second, in RAM disk memory. Second, the RAM in a RAM disk emulates a hard disk, making it slower than other RAM, albeit faster than a hard disk.
As I wrote in previous post, here is where the idea of RAM disk gets stupid: You have a limited amount of RAM, but you don't have control over it. When you allocate a portion of your RAM to RAM disk, you remove it from use by your applications and system taks, including your primary application. This then forces your OS to use virtual memory, thus slowing your computer down. If that is not stupid, then I don't know what is.
