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

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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
    2024-02-01T13:32:09+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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  4. Igor Leyko 112.4K Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2023-12-14T11:29:40+00:00

    How hard is for some people to understand that you can have up to 128GB on a workstation nowadays and want chunk of 100GB to be loaded inside the ram, for several reasons, like compilation or in my case,

    Sorry, but the question for a clarification. Can you evaluate:

    a) a percentage of users who have 128 GB RAM - 90 %, 50 %, 20 %, 5 %, 1 %, or less,

    b) a percentage of workstations with 128 GB RAM among total number of sold PCs?

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  5. Igor Leyko 112.4K Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2023-11-09T17:34:15+00:00

    I totally agree and that is proven by the impact of the data rates to/from disk having high impact on overall compilation time.

    I agree, but you may use third party RAM disk software and this software is selling officially, isn't it?

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