We have also covered tips to optimize Windows for Solid State Drives in the past which suggested among other things to move caches from the SSD to another drive.

That tip was problematic, especially for users with only SSDs connected to their computer.

A workaround for those users is to use a ram disk for caching purposes. Ram disks, sometimes also called ram drives, are storage devices that use computer memory to store the data.

This is obviously only a feasible alternative if the PC has enough system memory that can be spared for the ram disk. Any PC with three or more Gigabytes of computer memory should be able to run a ram disk for caching purposes.

This article covers the creation of the ram disk and explains how to move the cache from the SSD to the ram disk.

Windows users can select from a variety of Ramdisk applications. We have covered Ramdisk.sys in the past for instance but will use the Dataram Ramdisk software this time.

The free version of the program supports ramdisk up to a size of 4 Gigabytes. This is sufficient for moving the cache to the ram disk and for most other uses as well.

Start the Dataram RAMDisk Configuration Utility after installation. The tool is listed in the Dataram Ramdisk start menu entry.

ramdisk

The ram disk is configured in the Settings tab. The size, file system and boot sector settings can be defined in here. How much memory should you turn into a ram disk? That depends on the memory installed and the required size of the caching directories.. Users with four or more Gigabytes can use at least a One gigabyte disk.

One option to find out how much of the memory can be used is to open the Windows Task Manager by pressing Ctrl-Shift-Esc, switch to the performance tab and look at the physical memory section. Using half of the ram under the available section is usually a safe bet.

The file system can either be Fat16 or Fat32. Users who prefer NTFS or another file system need to select unformatted and format the disk in Windows after it has been created.

A click on Start RAMDisk will create the disk and assign a free drive letter to it.

ram disk

The f: drive in the screenshot above is the newly created ram disk.

The second step of the process is to configure the applications and operating system to make use of the ram disk by changing the cache directories to a location on the new ramdrive.

We give examples for the Windows temporary file folders, Firefox and Internet Explorer caches.

Windows Temporary Folders

The Windows temp directories are stored in the system’s environment variables. The easiest way to open the configuration window is by pressing Windows-Pause on the keyboard and selecting Advanced System Settings from the sidebar of the window that opens.

Locate the Advanced tab in System Properties and click on Environmental Variables. Here we have user variables and system variables.

environment variables

Candidates here are for instance the TEMP and TMP system and user variables. They can be edited by selecting each one of them and clicking on Edit. Simply enter the new path in the variable value field and leave the variable name as it is.

changing windows temp folder

Changing Firefox Cache

Open the Firefox web browser and type in about:config in the Firefox address bar. Enter browser.cache.disk.parent_directory in the filter field and double-click the parameter.

Now enter a location on the ram disk to make Firefox use that as the caching folder.

firefox cache location

Internet Explorer Cache

Open Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and click on Tools > Internet Options. The Internet Options are also accessible from the Windows Control Panel.

Click on Settings next to browsing history in the General tab and on Move Folder in the next window to move the temporary Internet Files folder to the ram disk.

temporary internet files

There is another benefit of using a ram disk for caching locations. The ram disk will automatically be cleared on shutdown which makes recovery of those caching files afterwards impossible (unless a snapsnot of the ram is taken shortly after shutdown).

Solid State Drives benefit from the reduced write operations and it might even speed up some operations marginally.

You could run a free disk space wiper like Eraser every time you close Firefox but that is not very practicable. A far better solution that would also speed up your browsing experience is to use a Ramdisk to store the Firefox cache. Ramdisks, I hear you moan already that they are a relict of the past and not useful anymore. Wrong again..

Ramdisks make sense in many situations, especially if you have enough RAM so that the Ramdisk gets a decent amount of it. As a quick explanation, a Ramdisk is a temporary disk in your RAM. It has a drive letter and behaves like any hard drive or USB device that is connected to your computer.

The benefit is that it is faster than a hard drive because RAM is faster than hard drives and that everything that gets written to it will be gone once you restart the computer.

I’m going to explain how to create a Ramdisk and set the directory of the Firefox cache to it to increase security and speed. First, download the file Ramdisk.sys and extract it to your computer. Start the application ramdisk.exe afterwards.

Click on the left button Install Ramdisk and wait a few seconds. All other options should become active afterwards. Begin by selecting a size (of your RAM) for the Ramdisk. I would not use more than 50% of your RAM for the Ramdisk, I’m using 25% which translates to 512 Megabytes of RAM for the Ramdisk.

Select a drive letter afterwards, pick one from the end to avoid conflicts. Keep the Fixed Media Entry and click on OK. This should initialize the Ramdisk. Check to see if the new drive letter is available in My Computer.

Now open Firefox and enter about:config in the address bar. Filter for the string browser.cache.disk.parent_directory. If it is not found create it by right-clicking the empty space and selecting New > String from the menu. Paste the above string into the form and enter the value driveletter:\\directory.

My Ramdisk has been created with the drive letter Z:\ which means that I used the value z:\\temp\\ for the Firefox cache. Please note that you have to use double “\\” and not single “\”.

Restart Firefox after creating the new entry and visit some websites. Now head over to your Ramdisk and check if the cache is filling with the files of those websites. If you followed this instruction it should. The cache will be deleted once you reboot or shut down your system.

One convenient way to setup a Ramdisk is to use the software AR Ramdisk which is easy to setup and work with. Just install AR Ramdisk as usual and start configuring the settings afterwards. Assign a drive letter to the Ramdisk and choose a size for it. I would not suggest to select more than a quarter of your Ram but you can experiment with the settings if you like. Leave everything as is and restart your computer afterwards. You should see a new drive letter after the restart, now copy files or applications to the Ramdisk and start them from there.

You will see a noticeable speed increase when running applications from the Ramdisk. A good website to get some portable applications is the portable apps website which has downloads for programs like Firefox, Thunderbird and many others.

It is also possible to use the Ramdisk for the temp files of Windows. To do that you need to move the Temp directory from the default location to the Ramdisk. To change the default location go to Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Environment Variables and change the Windows temp dir to the Ramdisk.

It should be noted that all data that is in the Ramdisk will be lost if you restart the computer. Remember that the files reside in system Ram. This is great for temp files which means that you do not have to delete the temp files by yourself. It could also be used to set the disk cache of Firefox to the Ramdisk which would mean that it would be automatically cleared during shutdown.