George Skarbek March 2010

What drives? There are three types of virtual drives that can help. They are: A mapped network drive Virtual CD/DVD drive RAM drive The RAM drives are generally the most beneficial in terms of improving performance

Virtual CD drives

Why RAM drives? On all computers with 4 GB RAM and over running a 32 bit operating system, memory over 3.3 GB is not used due to reserved memory for the BIOS This unused memory can be used to improve productivity by creating a RAM drive which appears as a physical drive that is much faster than a conventional hard disk. My 2 year old computer has a transfer speed of 195 MB/Sec

How The RAM drive can be used as Ready Boost by Vista and Win 7 You can use the RAM drive for testing software When sharing folders using a RAM drive can be more secure in case a hacker gets in because drive C will not be accessible

Use it for Temp files In all versions of Windows using RAM drive for the temp files gives the following benefits: There is no contention on the read/write heads when temp files are created, such as when opening Word, very much faster file access, no cleaning up required as all contents are lost on a re-boot, saves space and wear on drive C, reduces fragmentation on drive C, saves time and disk space when doing an image backup as junk files are not backed up. I have seen well over 10,000+ files in the Temp folders (this is not the temp Internet folders)

Change two environment variables

Possible problems Only possible drawback is the temp folder filling if the computer is never re-booted or if installing some massive program such as Nero with all options. This is easily fixed by temporarily using the physical drive for temp files. Many free RAM drive programs do not support drives over 64 MB in Windows 7 but at least one does. See: services/software/ramdisk For some, to install you must run HWWIZ from DOS

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