Do RAM disks actually speed up browsing?

Just curious. Do Ram disks actually speed up browsing or is this a myth?

 

When I compare it to HDD, loading pages seems a little bit quicker. Comparing to SSD, I notice no difference. I've put my cache on RamDisk to reduce I/O activity of my disks. IMO other factors (connection speed, AVs scanning http traffic...) have more impact on browsing speed than disk.

Regards, hqsec

 

A little, but not worth it overall.
Your Internet is slower than the disk cache.
Mrk

 

For disk i/o and privacy, I find RAM Disks quite useful if you have enough RAM sitting around: https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=2297091&postcount=8

 

^^^This exactly.

 

Out goes the RAM disk. Thanks guys.

 

I'm using Sandboxie for web browsing and I have the sandbox container folder located on a RAM disk which speeds up writing to the sandbox and avoids the need for secure deletion of the sandbox to maintain privacy.

It's mainly Sandboxie's operation that is being speeded up though, not web browsing itself. I doubt that the benefits from using a RAM disk for web browsing are sufficient to be worth bothering if not using a sandbox.

 

Nah, it's not worth it on the notebook that I got. It's running Windows 7 on a 1.5ghz core solo so any CPU usage is a problem. So RAM disk/SBIE or anything else that runs in a background is a problem. I even turned off Windows Update service to speed things up.

 

Putting the cache on a RamDisk did speed up the browser for me. When I was trying SandBoxie, I put the sandbox on a RamDrive, which worked quite well. IMO, if you've got RAM to spare, they're worthwhile.
Regarding

I don't see why writing to a RamDisk would use any more CPU than writing to a physical disk. RamDisks function more like physical devices than processes. IMO, they're worthwhile from a privacy perspective and for reducing wear on physical drives.

 

Im running 7 on that notebook and so I dont expect any privacy on it. Its mainly for Netflix and occasional guest who needs access to the internet.

 

Possibily. Writes to the cache will speed up considerably, though I assume these are asynchronous. Any synchronous read/write will have potential benefits to performance, I just assume almost everything is asynch at this point.

For a site like wilders the static javascript and various other things could be cached, and therefor pulled much faster, leading to faster page load time. This could be quite noticeable if you're using a standard hard drive.

 

With Firefox and Chrome, you don't need RAMDisks. There are parameter switches to achieve a similar effect.

 

Safeguy, are you referring to parameters which force the browser to use only RAM for caching? In that case wouldn't the cache be cleared right after closing the browser, so that you would have to reload the stuff which would have been cached on the HDD otherwise and thus making things actually slower?

I have been trialling an ramdisk software with the option to save its contents to an image file at shutdown and reload them at booting, so they can even survive a reboot.

 

For Dragon and Chrome i use this in my taskbar shortcuts.."C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --disk-cache-dir="/tmp/ram/". to put all the Cache for them in RamDisk Memory. Easy and works good.

 

hi

how can i create a ram disk ? i mean i would like to do the same
not for internet cache but

thanks!

 

This is what I am personally using and recommend: http://www.softperfect.com/products/ramdisk/

Should be self-explanatory, but if you need any help post away.

 

yes , may i ask you how do you measure the I/O of your sdd or ssd host writes ?

is there a tutorial to how lower the I/O of the ssd ?

thanks

 

I monitor Disk I/O with Process Explorer. Do note that you need to run it as admin to see Disk and Network I/O instead of just I/O. To see Disk I/O on startup, make a new scheduled task.

As for a tutorial, I don't really know of one to recommend, sorry. How a RAM disk lowers Disk I/O depends on how much you use it over your SSD.

 

hi
i use CrystalDiskInfo 6.0.4 , and it 's weird because with the pc idle the total host writers marks 3Gb in a day

used process explorer and process hacker ,but it does give such i/o consume

thanks

 

Software is never perfect at monitoring hardware. Process Explorer is best for monitoring what is occurring right now instead of over a long time period. Anyhow, if you have enough RAM and will use the RAM Disk regularly, go for it.