RAM Disks!

[Mechcozmo]

I made a little utility that will make a 128MB RAM disk for you.

It's just a shell script inside an Automater shell so you can click it.

Warnings: If your computer crashes, you loose the RAM disk. Same if you restart, etc. Good sides: means you don't need to spin up the hard drive as often because your data is already in RAM and can be accessed directly from there.

I'd like to make it so that it asks you what size you want, but Automater is so trimmed down and Applescript is so hard to learn...

ftp://nichrome.serveftp.com/RAMDisk.zip

 

[dmw007]

Cool script Mechcozmo.

But are RAM disks really any use nowadays?
Especially a 128MB one?

 

[Mechcozmo]

Cool script Mechcozmo.

But are RAM disks really any use nowadays?
Especially a 128MB one?

1. Laptop users who don't want to have their hard drives spin up often (saves battery)
2. People with slow hard drives (Mac Mini users, iBook users)
3. A quick area to group a bunch of files together to then clone onto a physical disk (hacking! fun for the entire family!)

And it is rather easy to set the size inside the script. Just need Automator to give me a prompt... or learn AppleScript.

I've found that if manipulating a decently large number of items, it is a great place to have the images be read from. Eliminates a bottleneck of reading from the hard drive and writing to it as well. Also means that they can be read faster and processed faster. Not much, but with slower hard drives and slower computers it does make a difference. And RAM is cheap.

(Just so that someone doesn't freak: Yes, I didn't write the script, but the guy who did write the script asked someone to make a GUI wrapper for it. And I did. I don't think anyone will mind since nobody is charge for the original, nor this. And I did provide a link to the original article, as well as cite the author, in the Automator script. Do a "Show Package Contents", then go to Contents and open up the 'document.wflow' file. You won't be able to edit anything, but you can view the script and copy/paste it into your own Automator thingamajiggy if you want to change the size, name, etc.)

 

[dmw007]

1. Laptop users who don't want to have their hard drives spin up often (saves battery)
2. People with slow hard drives (Mac Mini users, iBook users)
3. A quick area to group a bunch of files together to then clone onto a physical disk (hacking! fun for the entire family!)

And it is rather easy to set the size inside the script. Just need Automator to give me a prompt... or learn AppleScript.

I've found that if manipulating a decently large number of items, it is a great place to have the images be read from. Eliminates a bottleneck of reading from the hard drive and writing to it as well. Also means that they can be read faster and processed faster. Not much, but with slower hard drives and slower computers it does make a difference. And RAM is cheap.

(Just so that someone doesn't freak: Yes, I didn't write the script, but the guy who did write the script asked someone to make a GUI wrapper for it. And I did. I don't think anyone will mind since nobody is charge for the original, nor this. And I did provide a link to the original article, as well as cite the author, in the Automator script. Do a "Show Package Contents", then go to Contents and open up the 'document.wflow' file. You won't be able to edit anything, but you can view the script and copy/paste it into your own Automator thingamajiggy if you want to change the size, name, etc.)

Thanks for clarifying things for me Mechcozmo! Guess that I might have to try this on my iBook G4- it could stand to have a RAM disk helping hand.

 

[howesey]

OS X already makes a RAM disc and throws your programs and files into there. It is very effective.

 

[dmw007]

OS X already makes a RAM disc and throws your programs and files into there. It is very effective.

I thought that it did.
So is it worth it to create another one?

 

[Mechcozmo]

OS X already makes a RAM disc and throws your programs and files into there. It is very effective.

Never heard of this before. I've heard of OS X caching things in RAM, which is very different than a RAM disk. Inactive Memory is what you were thinking of?

 

[Mechcozmo]

Update!

Now you can set the disk size, thanks to my shell scripting skills and my friend's Automator skills.

Here's the link to the updated version (now called Pro because we're Apple geeks):

ftp://nichrome.serveftp.com/RAMMakerPro.zip

Same warnings apply, namely, if your computer crashes and you hard-restart you'll lose the information on the RAMDisk. Same if you eject the disk. Upsides, the hard drive doesn't need to spin up as much.