This browser is no longer supported.
Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support.
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Hi, I wanted to create a RAM disk on Windows 11. I found an article for Windows 7 and 10 which has been updated recently:
However, when I tried it on Windows 11, it didn't seem to work properly.
After making changes to the TEMP and TMP environment variables as well as some application specific temp / cache paths to point them towards the RAM disk, everything appeared fine initially. But when running more intensive workloads, I experienced intermittent crashes and eventually a blue screen: DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (probably related to the storage driver implementation used by ImDisk).
After reverting the changes I made to the temp / cache directories, removing the RAM disk, and uninstalling ImDisk, everything has been stable again.
My question is: Is there any way to set up a RAM Disk on Windows 11 without compromising system stability?
For my use case, I don't require persistent storage, but it should be auto-mounted on boot.
Thank you, Paul.
PS: Please ignore discussions regarding why someone might need such a setup; each person has their own unique use case which doesn't necessarily apply universally.
PPS: Revisiting this thread after nearly a year reveals that there is no official solution from Microsoft. While there may be paid options available, given the history of free solutions causing issues under load, I am hesitant to invest time and money checking each one individually.
In summary, there seems to be no official or unofficial (but endorsed) solution at present.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
adding a me-too for those derailers who don't understand use-cases.
Sometimes if I am crunching BMD6K RAW footage, it would be nice to know an official way to set-aside 32GB-96GB RAMdisk to "pre-load" a batch of clips that I will be scrubbing through shortly.
With TLC SSD's being the norm at time of writing, there is hilarious speed-crashes once they have been in continuous use for 30+ minutes and/or GC is overrun.
How hard is for some people to understand that you can have up to 128GB on a workstation nowadays and want chunk of 100GB to be loaded inside the ram, for several reasons, like compilation or in my case, data that is loaded because I have to do a repeated task connecting and disconnecting from accounts that need loading several GBs every time and while doing that thousands of small files are written or read, most o them around 100KB to 20MB.
M.2 are good? yes they are, but doing tasks like this burn M.2 literally by overheating(not just the usage) random read/writes are most costy to storage devices, i needed a cooler on top of mine, cause it was touching 90ºC easily, then i got a secondary one, to split from main system.
Buying the second m.2 cost me about the same price as buying more 2x 32GB sticks of ram would btw, with 10% of the actual benefit it would.
There are dozens of situations that using RAM storage, either as a temp/cache or as copy, that is not going to be saved after, would be essential.
But the main point is, speed is a major factor, cause 10x the speed is a lot and that factor is highly unlikely to ever change.
Yes, there are 3rd party software around, but they often end up with dozens of issues that are affected by system updates breaking them, or apps resetting/deleting mklink junctions for instance, i used to have imdisk in windows 10, but got tired of redoing the junctions and having to restore backups.
This happens because even though symlinks are a system thing, they are not default behavior, so apps won't support and the system most of the time won't pass the path like if they were real path, which microsoft could do with a snap a finger.
BTW ramdisk is not really that different from caching, which already exists, but the current format denies us real access to control the limit of the cached data and it could easily allow us to pre cache entire folders, in fact this behavior already exists to some level in file servers.
I'm really hoping that the new keys found in a recent update are somehow a way to increase caching waay beyond current levels.
NtfsCachedRunsBinMaxLengthInBytes"=hex(b):00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
"NtfsCachedRunsDelta"=hex(b):00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
"NtfsCachedRunsInsertLimit"=hex(b):00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
"NtfsCachedRunsLimitMode"=hex(b):00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
Otherwise i might just end up going back to W10 or W7.
Yes, a sample virtual disk code was in Windows Developer Kit for many years.
Moreover, there was a vdisk.sys driver in MS-DOS, and I've used it in DOS times. But unfortunately, there is no RAM disks general usefulness now, especially after M.2 SSDs appearing.
I think many of us with more RAM than usually needed during daily workflows still wish this was a viable option. I have a very fast 4th gen M.2 drive, but tapping into my fairly ordinary 64GB of DDR4-4000 is still several orders of magnitude faster in response/latency. Clearly Redmond has reasons for not bringing support for something that capable, and I'm left trusting the engineers, but still pining for more.
Hi, unfortunately I could not find the dmp file in the provided locations. (Are they getting automatically deleted after a successful reboot? I did that 1/2 times to check if everything was okay after I reverted the settings)
Anyway, I've found the official repo of ImDisk: https://github.com/LTRData/ImDisk
The developer clearly states that it is not recommended to be used on Windows Vista or later.
Which begs the question why it was even promoted for windows 7 to 10 in my previously linked article...
Again, doesn't matter, the developer points to a new project which should work: https://github.com/ArsenalRecon/Arsenal-Image-Mounter
I haven't tested it yet, but I will do so in the near future.
Still, I leave the question open though: Is there actually a Microsoft approved way to get a ram disk working on Windows 11?
Something along the lines of tmpfs which you'd find on bsd or linux would be prefect.
I'm sorry... I meant that the RAM specs for my system are not exactly 'cutting-edge' or highest performance. Still, even with a 16GB build, if the user's daily workflow maxes out at a significantly smaller amount, the benefits of a reliable/stable RAM disk would still be of benefit. There's a sound reason why so many disk manufacturers place emphasis on cache - reliance on limited, high-speed resources to boost gains will always be of interest.
