Ram Drive under Linux? and another question...?

[Daniel ~]

My other question first, we discussed this a bit in another thread...

Does a swap file on a SSD even make sence? I mean we use a swap file to put the most recently use files on the fastest part of a spinning hard drive...see my question?

This would seem to be a question independent of OS?

OK! Ram Drives! First question, is a RAM drive basically just a massively faster swap file? Ram pretending to be a SSD or mechanical drive?

Is it worth doing if you have the RAM...( and I think I do! ":O} )

How esoteric is this to carry out under Linux?

(If this is going to involve a lot of really really hard cutting only to be followed by a lot of really really hard...pasting,... like to my terminal...could you please say so up front?

It's ChrisBard you see... I worry that he may not be up to the kind of full on frontal satirical attach upon mother Linux, that he ( and at times we) feel it's his duty as our distinguished alternative point of view...to provide for us...his forum brothers...

(even when, and if, sometimes, it may seem, it's only an alternative to reason...common sense and human decency,

it's still a point of view we should all try to welcome like the ungracious bastards we are!

I hope your up for this ChrisBard, we need you at our side, co-piloting the terminal Controls!. ":O}

[Gizmo]

I really don't see much point in a RAM drive (or ram-disk). The filesystem maintains a file cache, which it expands and contracts as necessary based on system memory requirements for applications.

The purpose of the cache is to have recently used and commonly accessed information handy in RAM so that you don't have to go to the drive to get it. To a large extent, SSDs do away with the need for the file system cache, but not entirely (there's still some performance overhead associated with the calls down to the hardware to get the data).

If you build a RAM disk, any information you want to use out of it has to first be explicitly copied to it. In addition, a RAM disk is volatile by its very nature, so anything you put on it has to be backed up somewhere else, and this has to be done by you.

So, basically, a RAM disk gives you a whole lot of hassle without gaining you anything that you don't already have by just letting the file system cache work like its supposed to.

Now, there are RAM DRIVES out there that you can get which are essentially SSDs implemented with RAM. They are bad fast (even faster than the fastest SSDs), but very pricey for the amount of storage you get (think how much a 4 GB stick of RAM costs, then think about how much RAM you'd need to buy to get a reasonbly sized RAM drive). Other than being implemented in hardware, they basically have all the same drawbacks of a RAM disk implement in your computer.

[Daniel ~]

Ok! Thank you, that's one mad project I'll give a pass. Did you know that my new motherboard is going to give Intel raid a chance to fall on it's face again!?