There are two things I wish to add to Dana's explaination: the RAM disk tends to be most useful with older operating systems. New ones, which implement virtual memory, will do pretty much the same thing in a more efficient manner. All of that buffering and caching is probably why computers need several hundred MB of RAM to run properly these days.
The other thing is the utility of RAM disks. They tend to be most useful on Apple laptops, where the objective is battery life rather than speed. A spinning hard drive uses a lot of power. RAM will use pretty much the same amount of power regardless of how much of it is used. So, if you have the RAM, you stuff your files onto a RAM disk so that the hard drive will be in power saving mode most of the time. Other than that, I suggest avoiding RAM disks on a Quadra for anything but temporary files which you don't care about in the slightest. (Things like your web browser cache. Then again, if you are placing the cache on a RAM disk, you are probably better off boosting the RAM cache and turning off the disk cache.) This is for three reasons: if you loose power, you loose your RAM disk; there is very little, if any, memory protection in the system software so a misbehaved application can more easily overwrite the RAM disk; and the potential for loss means that you cannot recover data from temporary files if the system goes down (some programs save intermediate results in a temporary file). Byron. -- Quadlist is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Enter To Win A | -- Canon PowerShot Digital Cameras start at $299 | Free iBook! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Quadlist info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/quadlist.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/quadlist%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
