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What are these RAM SSDs of which the article speaks? I searched around for a bit, but couldn't find any place to order one (keep getting hits for PCs for sale)

by diydsp 13y ago

What are these RAM SSDs of which the article speaks? I searched around for a bit, but couldn't find any place to order one (keep getting hits for PCs for sale)... are they available in say, 64GB in SATA?

wmf 13y ago
They tend to be enterprisey or OEM-only; here are some examples: http://www.ddrdrive.com/ http://www.ddrdrive.com/ http://www.stec-inc.com/products/zeusram-enterprise-sas-ssd/ http://www.stec-inc.com/products/zeusram-enterprise-sas-ssd/ http://www.dataonstorage.com/dataon-products/enterprise-class-ssds/zeusram-6g-sas-ssd.html http://www.dataonstorage.com/dataon-products/enterprise-clas... http://www.sandirect.com/texas-memory-ramsan-440-enterprise-ssd-storage-p-1247.html http://www.sandirect.com/texas-memory-ramsan-440-enterprise-...
- rwmj 13y ago
  8GB for $3000. And I thought SSDs were expensive ...
  - vegardx 13y ago
    But they are typically a factor of 5-10 times faster than current generation SSDs, and not just in raw read/write, but also in access time.
  - belorn 13y ago
    That's more expensive than just running on regular memory.
    - wmf 13y ago
      Because it's nonvolatile.
    - rdl 13y ago
      Obviously if you're willing to give up the reboot/etc. tolerance, you can run a ramfs and buy more ram, especially on servers or desktops (it isn't too hard to get absurd things like 18 DIMM slots in a machine)
solarmist 13y ago
He's referring to Ram disks in the article. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_disk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_disk). The only result I found to buy was this software from AMD (to partition some of your RAM as a RAM disk). http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832385001 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832385....
- yareally 13y ago
  ImDisk[1] is free without restrictions and also open source. I just set it as a small system startup script[2] to create a ramdrive on boot into Windows. Makes for a nice throwaway drive for things that are read/write intensive (like compression/extraction) or putting a mini virtual machine on and running it purely in RAM. I also put things like my temp downloads there, page file, temp directories, browser caches/history. I suppose you could put the scratch drive for Photoshop on it as well, but I have never tried that. Technically, you can also save all the files from the disk on shutdown, but you have to wait for them to copy back, though I prefer the volatile nature of the drive and having it wipe everything on reboot except for a predefined directory structure that gets recreated each boot. RAM is cheap and I ended up buying 24GB for $150 or so a while back so having a ramdrive gives you a use for all that excess RAM. When I'm using my laptop with 4GB I miss having the extra space a bit. [1] http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html/ http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html/ [2] https://gist.github.com/yareally/6199239 https://gist.github.com/yareally/6199239 (my batch startup file example and link to a more detailed guide)
  - tiziano88 13y ago
    You put your page file in a Ramdisk? We need to go deeper...
    - yareally 13y ago
      Mainly to avoid the Windows page file from getting fragmented on a HDD, since fragmentation on a RAM disk is a non-issue. I keep my home desktop PC on most of the time and don't reboot often unless switching OSs.
nwh 13y ago
There was a piece of consumer hardware that I used for a very short time called the iRam. You basically got a battery backed RAM based disk (presented over SATA) that could saturate just about any application you wanted. Was expensive as hell and only went up to 4GB, but I would love to have something similar today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-RAM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-RAM

by diydsp 13y ago

wmf 13y ago

They tend to be enterprisey or OEM-only; here are some examples: http://www.ddrdrive.com/ http://www.ddrdrive.com/ http://www.stec-inc.com/products/zeusram-enterprise-sas-ssd/ http://www.stec-inc.com/products/zeusram-enterprise-sas-ssd/ http://www.dataonstorage.com/dataon-products/enterprise-class-ssds/zeusram-6g-sas-ssd.html http://www.dataonstorage.com/dataon-products/enterprise-clas... http://www.sandirect.com/texas-memory-ramsan-440-enterprise-ssd-storage-p-1247.html http://www.sandirect.com/texas-memory-ramsan-440-enterprise-...

rwmj 13y ago
8GB for $3000. And I thought SSDs were expensive ...
- vegardx 13y ago
  But they are typically a factor of 5-10 times faster than current generation SSDs, and not just in raw read/write, but also in access time.
- belorn 13y ago
  That's more expensive than just running on regular memory.
  - wmf 13y ago
    Because it's nonvolatile.
  - rdl 13y ago
    Obviously if you're willing to give up the reboot/etc. tolerance, you can run a ramfs and buy more ram, especially on servers or desktops (it isn't too hard to get absurd things like 18 DIMM slots in a machine)

solarmist 13y ago

He's referring to Ram disks in the article. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_disk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_disk). The only result I found to buy was this software from AMD (to partition some of your RAM as a RAM disk). http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832385001 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832385....

yareally 13y ago
ImDisk[1] is free without restrictions and also open source. I just set it as a small system startup script[2] to create a ramdrive on boot into Windows. Makes for a nice throwaway drive for things that are read/write intensive (like compression/extraction) or putting a mini virtual machine on and running it purely in RAM. I also put things like my temp downloads there, page file, temp directories, browser caches/history. I suppose you could put the scratch drive for Photoshop on it as well, but I have never tried that. Technically, you can also save all the files from the disk on shutdown, but you have to wait for them to copy back, though I prefer the volatile nature of the drive and having it wipe everything on reboot except for a predefined directory structure that gets recreated each boot. RAM is cheap and I ended up buying 24GB for $150 or so a while back so having a ramdrive gives you a use for all that excess RAM. When I'm using my laptop with 4GB I miss having the extra space a bit. [1] http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html/ http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html/ [2] https://gist.github.com/yareally/6199239 https://gist.github.com/yareally/6199239 (my batch startup file example and link to a more detailed guide)
- tiziano88 13y ago
  You put your page file in a Ramdisk? We need to go deeper...
  - yareally 13y ago
    Mainly to avoid the Windows page file from getting fragmented on a HDD, since fragmentation on a RAM disk is a non-issue. I keep my home desktop PC on most of the time and don't reboot often unless switching OSs.

nwh 13y ago

There was a piece of consumer hardware that I used for a very short time called the iRam. You basically got a battery backed RAM based disk (presented over SATA) that could saturate just about any application you wanted. Was expensive as hell and only went up to 4GB, but I would love to have something similar today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-RAM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-RAM