Finally found a use for a ram disk

[eyoungren]

Can you allocate RAM disk to OS itself so that it boots faster?

P. S. I know I need to get an SSD, but that’s in plans so far.

Well, you can't mount a RAM drive until the OS loads. What you're looking to do would require either using Open Firmware or modifying it I think. That's not really an easy thing.

Then you'd have to get around where the boot sequence is expecting files to be - which is a whole other thing.

BTW, an SSD is not going to give you the boot speed increase you may think you're going to get. You are still limited by the IDE bus on a G4 or older and the SATA 1 bus on G5s. Yes, it will be faster, but not a blink and it's booted type of thing.

 

[MysticCow]

Can you allocate RAM disk to OS itself so that it boots faster?

P. S. I know I need to get an SSD, but that’s in plans so far.

No, but you can use it for, say, TenFourFox's or Classilla's cache location. Or for Photoshop/GIMP work, as you move the image file to the RAM disk before opening. It really is a HUGE help, as moving it directly into the RAM disk (and thus the RAM itself) cuts down on the hard drive working on it.

 

[barracuda156]

Well, you can't mount a RAM drive until the OS loads. What you're looking to do would require either using Open Firmware or modifying it I think. That's not really an easy thing.

Then you'd have to get around where the boot sequence is expecting files to be - which is a whole other thing.

BTW, an SSD is not going to give you the boot speed increase you may think you're going to get. You are still limited by the IDE bus on a G4 or older and the SATA 1 bus on G5s. Yes, it will be faster, but not a blink and it's booted type of thing.

I got G5 Quad, but yeah, SATA 1 is a limitation. From what I understand from some YouTube demos, SSD does increase the speed visibly enough though.

 

[B S Magnet]

I have never owned a Mac where I had RAM to spare. Even the G5 and Mac Pro at work have limited ram (the G5 has 4GB and the MP has 3GB).

But with the ram I now have in my 2.3DC I DO have ram to spare and I've allocated 2GB of it to a ram disk.

Usable as a scratch disk by Photoshop and a recovery data location for InDesign it's helped speed things up a bit.

I'm using the system Prefpane called "Esperance DV". It's been around for a while but this is the first time I've really been able to leverage it.

And the best thing about it is that it will reload the ram disk on reboot. I don't have to remember.

Esperance DV can be found here.

Because Dropbox killed the Public folder: https://www.dropbox.com/s/c2qvj0e3dfp1m02/esperance_dv.zip?dl=0

View attachment 683364

(I was only made aware of this hack because this thread was bumped recently.)

Tentatively, I can report it appears to work successfully in the Snow Leopard for PowerPC environment, but curiously it only generates the RAM disk with the default “RamDisk” volume name and ignores anything I try to set it to be. This is no big deal, really.

Although configuring my browser profile directory to the RAM disk and setting up some kind of backup plan for the RAM disk (outside of using Time Machine) is something I’ll need to try out later, I’m excited to know this option is reasonably easy to set up for future use on both the PowerPC and Intel Macs. I also plan to give it a whirl as a scratch disk with Photoshop CS4 in the SL-PPC test environment.

 

[eyoungren]

(I was only made aware of this hack because this thread was bumped recently.)

Tentatively, I can report it appears to work successfully in the Snow Leopard for PowerPC environment, but curiously it only generates the RAM disk with the default “RamDisk” volume name and ignores anything I try to set it to be. This is no big deal, really.

Although configuring my browser profile directory to the RAM disk and setting up some kind of backup plan for the RAM disk (outside of using Time Machine) is something I’ll need to try out later, I’m excited to know this option is reasonably easy to set up for future use on both the PowerPC and Intel Macs. I also plan to give it a whirl as a scratch disk with Photoshop CS4 in the SL-PPC test environment.

Yeah, on the Intel Macs I would actually use Ram Disk Creator. I can report that it works up to Mojave. Have not tried it on my Catalina Macs.

Esperance is cool in that it will automount the RAM disk whenever you reboot - but it's limited to 2GB and, as you've discovered, is not keeping the name you want.

I ran across Esperance I think when Jaguar or Panther were new, so the fact that it can still be used at all up to Snow Leopard is amazing. Also, if you have a system with more than 2GB ram I'd still use Ram Disk Creator. The ability to RAID RAM drives in to one RAM disk is a way to get around the 2GB limit. And again Ram Disk Creator allows for multiple RAM disks - whereas Esperance only gives you one.

 

[B S Magnet]

Yeah, on the Intel Macs I would actually use Ram Disk Creator. I can report that it works up to Mojave. Have not tried it on my Catalina Macs.

Esperance is cool in that it will automount the RAM disk whenever you reboot - but it's limited to 2GB and, as you've discovered, is not keeping the name you want.

I ran across Esperance I think when Jaguar or Panther were new, so the fact that it can still be used at all up to Snow Leopard is amazing. Also, if you have a system with more than 2GB ram I'd still use Ram Disk Creator. The ability to RAID RAM drives in to one RAM disk is a way to get around the 2GB limit. And again Ram Disk Creator allows for multiple RAM disks - whereas Esperance only gives you one.

I plan to give RAM Disk Creator a try soon on my Intel Macs. Thanks for the suggestion.

For now, I’ve only set up relatively small (128MB) RAM disk volumes — “cache” volumes — as a way to bring some speed to browsing with Interweb and InterwebPPC. For PowerPC Macs, such as the SL-PPC test Mac, I may try setting up a 500MB RAM disk for Photoshop — which is a quarter of the total RAM on that system. As you mentioned earlier in this thread, setting this up on a G5 with greater than 2GB onboard RAM, and creating a 2GB RAM disk, would be more practical when working with Photoshop or other Adobe CS stuff. It could also provide a healthy performance boost for folks who have working, mid-2005 iMac G5s with 4.5GB onboard RAM.