On 26/04/2004, at 7:21 PM, Don wrote:
Booting from a RAM Disk should be a matter of setting up the RAM Disk in
the memory control panle, and then installing enough of the System onto it
to be able to boot up.
This thread has provoked a thought that I'd like to ask about. What is the purpose of a Ramdisk? It appears that it can have software installed...but what is the difference between RAM, a RAMdisk, and storage space on a hard drive.
Perhaps dumb questions, but I've never used one in my Mac history.
RAM is where apps usually actually -run-. they're stored on a HD and when they're run, they're transferred to RAM where the cpu can actually execute the instructions within. That's how most machines work, most of the time.
A RAMdisk is a section of RAM put aside by the system to act just like a hard drive, but RAM is so many times quicker than a hard drive - and any apps that need to regularly access a disk can access the RAMDisk instead and get some pretty massive speedups.
Not only that, a RAMDisk is quiet - no spinning, no ticking, just silently running straight from memory. Normally the contents of RAM are lost on a reboot, but that can be worked around, and when a RAMDisk survives a reboot like it's designed to, an OS install on that RAMDisk can boot insanely quickly, and silently.
One disadvantage is that like a normal disk, to actually -execute- an application it has to be loaded from the RAMDisk into the remaining RAM. That leaves you with less RAM to execute in, but with enough RAM installed and a small RAMDisk it can be worth doing. It's a tradeoff between using more memory, and acquiring speed and silence.
dana -- http://www.danamania.com/
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