Mount to ram drive

[Steel]

Ram is cheap these days and like many others i have more than i really need.

So my thought is what about an option that we can tick that then causes win toolkit to use ram drive for mounting instead of the normal location.

ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver "http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html/" is a free open Source program that supports creating ram drives on any windows including 7 & 8 32bit or 64bit.

If this was then built into win toolkit you could set up comand line options to auto create ram drive of a preset size and assign drive letter, then win toolkit would proceed with the normal operations to the ram drive ie mount image integrate etc.

Also users need a way to alter the default ram drive capacity to suit their availiable ram,

Users need the option to choose what default drive letter is assigned,

And also need the option whether the ram drive is deleted after saving the image is complted or when exiting win toolkit.

I thought this would be great option to drastically reduce the time it takes when integrating lots of updates etc on multiple images due to how fast ram is compared to even a SSD or multiple SSD's on raid 0 as i am.

Edited December 18, 2012 by Steel

[bphlpt]

If you already have your Ram Drive set up, you should be able to just point Win Toolkit to it, can't you? You can then use it for as much as you have Ram Drive space available and save the image somewhere else if you delete the Ram Drive or shut the computer down. Yes, the ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver is a free option, but there are enough other options that it wouldn't be fair to ask Lego to have to support them all.

Cheers and Regards

[Steel]

Just fyi i dont have a ram disk setup as i dont use one often enough to need it,

which is why i thought it would be a usefull option to build into win toolkit.

And when you consider that pc's with large amounts of ram are mainstream these days ,

and yet hard drives are still the slowest part of a pc .

So it would be a very pro-active move to build ram drive options into win toolkit.

Dont you think??

apreciate any thoughts on this

Cheers

[Legolash2o]

You would need a lot of RAM for it to be useful for WinToolkit. Users integrate 100s of updates at a time and that would require a lot of RAMDrive space (6-20GB)

[Steel]

Yeah thats true ,

I have 32Gb of ram and can spare 20Gb for doing win toolkit integration.

I just finished a new build ...4 versions of win7 X64 ...1584 updates ...152 addons... 54 tweaks...200+ drivers

...10 silent installs and a partridge in the pear tree lol.

All up took 3Hrs 23 minutes ..way too long and still was only using 10Gb or so hard drive space while integrating.

Although if its too much work to add as an option or pluggin to win toolkit fair enough.

Cheers

[Steel]

I had alternative thought on the subject of using a ram drive.

Instead of mounting wim to ram drive how about an option to prefetch to ram drive.

Ie: after selecting AIO integrater and the selected wim is mounted ,have a prefetch to ram drive option .

When that option is selected wintoolkit then creates 1-2Gb ram drive straight away,

From then any item (updates drivers addons etc)that is added for integrating imediately gets copied to ram drive .

Clicking the button to start integrating win toolkit integrates from the ram drive instead of from the original location.

This would still be faster than integrating files from the hard drive too the mounted wim on the hard drive.

This is exactly how hybrid drives works,and also Fancy cache software does the some for any drive .

So i know this would be anouther option that would reduce integrating time when handling a large number of updates etc.

Also if the end user is mounting the wim to a SSD (as i do)it would be even faster still.

Is this possible to add to win toolkit??

Edited December 20, 2012 by Steel

[ChiefZeke]

Seems to me an SSD as the \Mount location would be more effective than using a RAMDrive.

[crashfly]

You would need a lot of RAM for it to be useful for WinToolkit. Users integrate 100s of updates at a time and that would require a lot of RAMDrive space (6-20GB)

Maybe this needs to be studied a bit.  Assuming that a user wants to integrate "all" of the latest updates, maybe some statistics need to be generated to see if using a RAM drive would even be feasable.  I myself have 16gb of RAM and would set some aside for the program if necessary.  (Although I also have a SSD, it might not even be worth it.)

[mooms]

I think RAM drive will be faster than a SSD.

I use a SSD to build the image, and even with minimal updates to satisfy MS Update, the process still take 15-20 mins for each edition.

[Steel]

Attached are charts of conventional charts vs ssd vs ram drive .

Ram drive wins hands down ,even twin ocz vertex 4 ssd striped on raid 0 using sata 3 (6Gb/s) dont even come close.

correction web site isnt letting me upload any thing so heres the figures:

Conventional drive read speed =112Mb/s approx,

SSD read speed =477Mb/s approx,

ram drive read speed =5766Mb/s approx

Found these test figures online but from my own tests i can confirm a ram drive beats everything.

Thats why using a ram drive as fast cache for hard drive is so efective.

Edited December 21, 2012 by Steel

[crashfly]

What I meant by statistics were the sizes and not the speed.

[Legolash2o]

I've only ever noticed RAM Drive being fast for mounting images but i've never noticed it being fast for integration.