RAM Disk on Windows 11

Anonymous
2023-03-24T16:40:00+00:00

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:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/create-a-ram-disk-drive-in-windows-7-and-windows/cd42aac4-8b0e-4b61-a2ea-9560a3e17d5b

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.

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Devices and drivers

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.

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-11-01T00:43:58+00:00

    For those of you that might be unaware what ramdisk is, makes it possible to turn a portion of ram into a storage device which you can then direct your temp files to the path of your ramdisk storage and any other files that can fit in the space you have allocated.

    Make sure you backup the original paths before before using a ramdisk.

    It sounds like you created your ramdisk before knowing how much RAM your work load uses. I highly recommend changing everything you changed to the default settings and measure how much RAM you use for your workload. What's going on is you dedicated a certain amount of ram for your personal use and didn't leave enough ram for your system

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-07-27T19:13:59+00:00

    As someone else has mentioned, PRIMO RAMdisk is the solution you are looking for.

    It can create a local file to write out the Ramdrive's content, making the RAMdisk effectively persistent. Surviving reboots, as if the data's on disk.

    I upgraded to 64Gb RAM, and use 8Gb for portable apps, (effectively bypassing the registry as much as possible). And another 8Gb for pagefiling.
    My 9th Gen intel processor machine runs smooth and subtle like as a 16yr Lagavulin scotch. I can't ask for more...

    On my Intel 6-8th Gen processor machines, I throw in 32Gb, and do the same setup, which still gives me 16Gb to do day to day stuff...
    This setup shows me clearly why I've no reason to buy another machine for at least another 5-7years. LOL. Definitely no need for a 12th gen machine (except for computing purpose where you CLEARLY NEED a processor running full throttle, and you must have the latest processors).

    Cost-wise? Thats $50/$100 for a pair of 16/32Gbs, and then the license for the software.

    Significantly cheaper for the result, than using Optane memory, let alone M.2 NVMes.

    And those DDR4 memory are good up to 12th Gen machines, so it's money well spend.

    For day-to-day machines, you can certainly achieve similar result with just 16Gb RAM, 4Gb for portable apps, and 4Gb for your pagefiles.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-05-08T14:14:17+00:00

    For anyoone who repplied, use Win11 DEV drive, that drive is not the same speed as a ram drive in the start, BUT as u use it, everything that is touched is kept on RAM, effectively creating a ram drive, not only that, but as u write it doesn't write instantly to the drive, but slowly writes the changes done to each file, instead of writing whole files.

    I used to load/unload thousands of small files from the SSD, atm this changed to a real load of a single time and a real write that instead of about 500MB ~1GB every few minutes to barely a few MBs, since the written data is only what was changes.

    This

    If u got lots of ram like me, as a side info, i would also disable memory compression and pagefile if u didn't yet, this reduces the processing required and speeds the ram access a bit.

    Cached = "Em cache"

    With almost no reads or writes:

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-05-08T10:23:28+00:00

    Successor of ImDisk:
    https://arsenalrecon.com/faqs/

    What are some of the key differences between Arsenal Image Mounter’s “Free Mode” and “Professional Mode”?

    Free Mode

    • RAM disk creation with either static or dynamic memory allocation

    I tried the free mode version and this also has the ability to create RAM disks.

    As this version is actively maintained I think i switch from imdisk to Arsenal Recon for RAMdisk functionality.

    Well see what the future brings (technically and licensing 'updates').

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