RAM Disk on Windows 11

Good morning, everyone!

I wanted to share a bit of nostalgia with you all. Back in the days of MS-DOS 6.2, Windows 98, and even Windows XP, RamDisk was an incredibly useful tool for me. It played a crucial role in optimizing system performance.

To set it up in MS-DOS, we had to configure the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files, specifically loading RAMDRIVE.SYS, the essential driver that made it all work. Those were the times when tweaking system settings manually wasn’t just a necessity—it was an art!

Those were the times when tweaking system settings manually was both an art and a necessity! I believe I still have those old configuration files archived somewhere. If anyone’s interested, I’d be happy to dig them up and share some insights from that era.

Let me know if you have any memories or experiences with RamDisk—I'd love to hear them!

it looks like this is a tool that you have to set up the temp folder dive every reboot manually rather than making a ram-disk at boot automatically for temp stuff, so not exactly what I was looking for. There was an AMD thing when zen1 launched (Radeon RAMDisk) that worked for win10, however, I guess that has since been discontinued and doesn't work on 11 from what I have read. I don't recall what I used on win7 and that comp is now dead (edit, Dataram RAMDisk), hence me trying to get a ram-disk for temp files going on win11 (OBJ/texture conversion and 3D render temp file stuff).

I need a 4 to 8 GB NTFS RAM-disk that happens on boot to have temp files go to for other apps that I don't have to manually create and format every time I turn on the PC. PRIMO RAMdisk appears to do that, yet I'm not sure if the standard license has a "create drive automatically at boot" option like the middle tier. Also, it doesn't appear to have monthly fees (unlike Arsenal) just to set up a temp-drive, so even better. If your intent is VMs for testing programs then Arsenal may be the better option (so long as you don't need it to automatically create the drive at boot).

P.S. one of them RAM-disk programs had some note about disabling windows fast-boot to prevent conflicts, probably a good idea so programs are not trying to put temp files in a drive that hasn't been created yet.

Please let me know how it goes, you may save me some time :)

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/unified-write-filter/uwf-turnonuwf

I noticed this is available in Windows 11 in the add or remove windows features for the Device Lockdown section, but I have not explored this feature as of yet for my own purposes. My OS Build 22631.4751.

Thanks for this interesting information. I knew about it when setting up older Thin Clients in the day but wasn't expecting this to be available in the 'normal' version of Windows. I see its there in W11 24H2. Will try this out on a test PC even I don't have a purpose for it yet :)

Hello all,

When working with Windows Embedded 7 & 8 and later with Windows IoT versions, I learned about File Based Write Filters (more recently titled the Unified Write Filter). I would use this "lock down feature" to revert the machine back to a state prior to when the write filter was turned on. Depending on how broadly the filter was employed, it had the benefit of protecting the machine from any changes (and protected the device from the BSOD resulting from non-graceful PC shut downs e.g.: power failures). This tool was used for edge devices that we knew absolutely would never have a graceful shutdown.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/unified-write-filter/uwf-turnonuwf

I noticed this is available in Windows 11 in the add or remove windows features for the Device Lockdown section, but I have not explored this feature as of yet for my own purposes. My OS Build 22631.4751.

Good luck