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
    2024-04-28T23:52:32+00:00

    Not using any type of ram disk now, using WIN 11 on a new laptop.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-04-28T22:16:22+00:00

    Do you still use ImDiskTk version 2021, no issues so far?
    Where did you get this version, from sourceforge/w77?

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-03-16T20:26:09+00:00

    Just installed ImDiskTk.exe (sha256 a161ff11f982600a0717c9674912fec2282aa6922cc495cc4cddb91e03a5e2b6, imdisk.sys 2021-10-30) on Windows 11 23H2 Home (10.0.22631.3296) and created a RAM disk with defaults. Works perfectly fine.

    ImDiskTk-x64.zip (sha256 fd5a32b7b6396ec6b23d6743e375b9d0f6c40c4f1fab166d8e89a870555a4c57, directory ImDiskTk20240210 inside, imdisk.sys 2015-12-15) gave me BSODs about KERNEL HEAP something.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-02-01T13:32:09+00:00

    WND_64 (or what ever your real name is...)

    My name is Harsh

    I guess you used to use RAM drive when there were systems with 20MB harddisks and 16 MB (yes 16 megabytes) ram on systems.

    That time people used to use DOS 6.2 (latest then)

    In windows environment concept of pagefile.sys is arrived, this file is of same size as systems RAM.

    Only changing Temp and TMP environment variables is not sufficient.

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-01-03T23:43:31+00:00

    I used ramdisk so that temp stuff would be removed on shutdown and a little more speed writing to RAM instead of HD.

    Windows 11 has a feature Storage Sense that can be setup to do the same thing, deleting temp & cache files.

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