We always say I have to delete some data from my SSD because it has filled up. We never say that to our RAM. We surely use the “RAM Cleaners” but never get direct access to our RAM for doing anything. RAM Disk allows you to do this. With the help of a RAM Disk, you can assign some space from the RAM as your secondary storage. But, why would anybody do that? Well, there are a lot of reasons for creating a RAM Disk in your computer because the RAM has higher bandwidth than our secondary storage devices and comparatively lower latency, they can serve us pretty well in terms of read/write performance.
Creating a RAM Disk is pretty easy in Windows. In macOS and Linux, you may have to use commands but you can create a RAM disk on almost all systems. Because some part of the RAM is being utilized as secondary storage, the first requirement is having enough RAM for your system after you create your RAM Disk. In the article below, I have given a detailed guide for creating a RAM Disk.
What is a RAM Disk?
As you know the RAM Disk is a part of your RAM set aside to use as secondary storage, but what is happening inside your computer? Well, the RAM Disk is an emulation of a real storage drive that uses a part of your memory. The size of the memory can be allocated manually while creating the RAM Disk. Just like a normal drive, you can create partitions and use file systems like NTFS or FAT32.
Generally, software is used to create the RAM Disk but some operating systems like macOS have built-in disk utility for creating RAM Disks. On the Linux operating system, RAM Disk is called tmpfs or ramfs. Most software would allow you to keep the memory allocation dynamic. It means that the RAM Disk would adjust its storage dynamically and only use the space required by the RAM Disk.
The speed of a RAM Disk can be up to 100 times faster than an SSD but it may vary depending on the speed of your RAM.
The internal working of a RAM Disk
In a RAM Disk, most of the heavy work happens on the software level. The program or commands that you use for the RAM Disk are responsible for allowing you direct access to your RAM. It is just like any other software that uses RAM for its work. The RAM Disk software use this RAM to provide storage space. This is the reason a RAM Disk can never save the data on its own before you turn off your computer. It will always create an image file on a specific folder (often selected when creating the RAM Drive), and sync the data on it. When you turn off the computer, the software will sync all the data from the RAM drive to that image file. This is the reason the systems using RAM drives take long durations for both booting up and shutdowns most of the time. Along with the auto-save function, you can also use the auto-mount feature which just loads that image file to your RAM drive when you turn the system back On.
When we look at our RAM Disks, they may look pretty simple and just like other drives like SSDs or HDDs, but there is a lot going on at the software level. macOS may have some advantages in terms of overall system load because the operating system itself is designed to work with the RAM drives. However, software like ImDisk and AMD Radeon RAMDisk can put an extra load on your system.
RAM is the temporary space for your CPU with more capacity compared to the CPU cache but at a lower speed. Whenever the CPU has more data that the CPU cache can’t store or isn’t frequently required by the CPU, it uses the RAM for storing that data. However, the software developers also have some control over how they can use the memory and how they can use it. With the RAM Drive software, they have harnessed this ability and created the software that helps us use RAM as our secondary storage drive.
Because RAM isn’t designed to work with the permanent data, there are always going to be some limitations which we are going to discuss below.
Why do people create RAM Disks?
Along with the performance I/O benefits, RAM Disks come with a very low latency (generally in nanoseconds) compared to SSDs and HDDs (generally in microseconds and milliseconds). The tasks that are dependent on frequent data access (such as video editing, database management, etc) can get great results with the help of a RAM Disk. Not only this, the programs that use and generate a lot of temporary files (web browsers, compilers, compression software, rendering engines, 3D software, etc) see huge performance benefits with the RAM Disks.
Another big benefit of having a RAM Disk is that it spares the hard drive from frequent write operations and reduces wear over time. RAM Disk is a good way to offload the write-heavy operations from the SSDs and give the RAM this job. This generally includes saving log and cache files on a RAM Disk. Because writing and reading the data to and from the RAM isn’t as destructive as to the SSD, RAM Disk can help increase SSD lifespan.
The RAM Disks are good to deploy in testing environments. Developers and testers typically use RAM Disks as a sandbox environment to test software in isolation, knowing that any changes made will disappear after shutdown. In this way, the RAM Disks become a good workspace for handling temporary data.
This may sound counter-intuitive but some people like RAM Disks because they wipe the data once the system is turned Off. Because RAM is volatile, all data on the RAM disk is wiped when the system shuts down unless you have set auto-save or sync features. This offers security to the files or sensitive data that doesn’t need to be stored long-term.
Drawbacks of a RAM Disk
There is no serious drawback to having a RAM Disk if you have enough free RAM after creating a RAM disk for your system and software. Also, you should set up the RAM Disk properly if you want to save its data before shutting your computer. If you have enough RAM and have set it up properly, there would be hardly any issue with it.
RAM is expensive to be used as your secondary storage but some specific works can be greatly benefitted from it and people generally spend money to get those benefits.
It could be problematic if the total memory on your computer is already low. For example, with 8GB RAM in your computer, you can’t create a RAM Disk of 4GB and expect some heavy software to work properly. There are dynamic RAM Disk but still, you will have to compromise a little bit on the memory space in any case. Below is the memory usage spike with a 2GB RAM Disk and it will stay just like this because I have assigned 2GB memory to it. In the dynamic allocation, there will be almost no memory spike until I use it for anything.
Creating RAM disks with the help of software adds an extra layer of abstraction over the simplicity of the computer memory. This puts an extra load on the CPU and may negatively impact the performance. This isn’t a critical issue in powerful computers but in the low-end ones, you can easily feel the performance drop with the RAM Disks. However, if you have enough RAM and a good CPU, you will have no serious problems with a RAM Disk.
I have personally been using a RAM Disk of 4GB in my computer for video editing and 3D modeling. I have set up dynamic memory allocation which has lower performance than the normal RAM Disk but it works great with my setup at 16GB total DDR5 memory.
RAM Disks vs SSDs
Now people would say that SSDs are fast enough these days. Yes, that’s true and SSDs have their own benefits of persistent storage and cost-effectiveness. RAM is more expensive (per GB) than the SSDs. But, it gives you near-instantaneous data access with its low latency. Also, if any work requires frequent data reading and writing on your drive, it can easily damage the memory cells in your SSDs. RAMs are very durable in those terms. So, there will be no serious wearing even if you put a very heavy load on your RAM Disk.
RAM Disks made with high-speed memory can easily surpass any SSD in the market in terms of sequential performance. But, the best thing is that the RAMs also have impressive random performance as well. This gives an advantage in terms of software performance. Another disadvantage with the RAM Disk is that you can’t have a very big RAM Disk (like 1TB) which you can easily have in an SSD.
So, both of them have their own drawbacks and benefits. Honestly, there is no direct competition between these both. SSDs are great for data integrity and cost-effectiveness. However, RAM Disks are a kind of software setup used by a very specific set of people to fulfill their specific requirements.
Conclusion
In my opinion, RAM Disk is a great choice for content creators, video editors, or anybody who works with random data or heavy files. The low latency of your RAM and high bandwidth can be utilized to reduce any possible storage bottleneck for your software and enhance its performance. For improving the random IOPS, a RAM Disk can be the ultimate solution for your computer. Most heavy content creation and creativity software create cache files which when stored on the RAM Disks can help with improving the overall performance.