RAM Disk on Windows 11

If I have 128GB, I specifically may want to 64GB for Visual Studio files.

Answers like yours saying "There is no use" is a disservice to those who like to tweak and optimize their machines.

There are very good reasons to have a RAM disk now with SSD drives. RAM is great, it doesn't really wear, it's only "flaw" is that it loses data when power is lost. SSD drives have finite maximum writes.

Of course, there's all kinds of optimization so theoretically it should take the "typical" user a very long time to reach the write limits. But if you're working with a lot of data or there's constant writing going on that's not good for an SSD.

I've read 300 to 1000 write cycle limitations per cell or triple cell. For that matter, why not forget trapping electrons or UV erasable ROM and go back to permanent write-once ROM that burns tiny fuses and just makes it 300 times the target capacity? If it could be done fast enough that would be great and a bonus is that data will never be lost and have the same "write" limitations.

I feel uneasy thinking about paging files now. Many programs constantly write to the hard drive. I was shocked to find out how much Chrome was constantly writing due to their use of MySQL database. With modern databases like Snowflake, if you're not able to write directly to cloud data storage, Snowflake expects bulk data uploads to be done with a local file.

If I'm doing automation gathering a lot of data regularly to push into a snowflake database, I have to first write it to disk and then the Snowflake driver can upload it to its staging area to be copied into a table. No practical way to do it all in memory so that's a lot of wasteful temporary writes to the SSD.

I automate a lot of processes to gather data and I've often had needs to create temporary files on the local drive. You can't always practically do everything in memory because utilities and tools have typically been designed to read and write to files. Researching and sharing data between applications often has suggestions to write to files.

While pipes could have been a nice option they open up a can of worms with security tools and IT departments and any software I create to use named pipes often gets flagged as suspicious. The most simple solution to this is a RAM disk. Fast reading and writing temporary files with no worries of disk wear would be awesome. A RAM disk would be really great to have for automation.

It would be even better if it was just included in Windows so I wouldn't need to use a 3rd party tool that I have to explain to an IT security department. It's solved my problem with Chrome. Chrome had the most constant disk writes of any application, while it was idle. I'd leave my computer running for months with Chrome open and I can't imagine the extent of what has been written.

Using a RAM disk I took a minimal configuration for Chrome with all my passwords, cookies, and bookmarks, zipped it up and I just extracted that to the RAM disk and set up a Chrome shortcut to use the ChromeData folder there. No more SSD disk writes from Chrome. I'd really like an integrated Microsoft RAM disk feature.

Maybe there's a way to have an option to periodically write its image to a real fixed-length storage file, only updating bytes that have changed and doing it far less frequently than what's going on now with programs using temporary files. Or even better, have it cloud drive synced so it's really not my problem.

Insteasd you can increase virtual memory size or page file size.

Sorry, but virtual disk (RAM disk) and virtual memory are totally different conceptions.

P.S. Windows 11 is Windows 10 successor and have a LOT of code that is common with Windows 10.

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.

Your point about there being "no RAM disks general usefulness now, especially after M.2 SSDs appearing." is not quite accurate though.

With SSD's being so much faster the speed benefits may have been reduced greatly, But if a situation exists where a large number of files is created, edited and deleted then this process will cause a SSD's lifespan to be reduced immensely. SSDs will not last for as long as a good old HDD. So to be honest using a RAM drive for temp files would actually be more benificial to a moden systems durability that it ever was.

Im actually surprised that MS isnt promoting this as a use for it own windows temp files. I would also think that it would help with heat production as a SSD being written to a lot would generate more heat that a ram chip.

Hello,

I personally have had many years of excellent experience with Primo Ramdisk. It costs some coin, but it really is a "set it and forget it" tool. As of the latest version 6.6.0 (2022-03-15), it also supports Windows 11.