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The most efficient ramdisk driver


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#1 Xdxd321

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Posted 27 April 2021 - 12:03 PM

Hello. I would like to say hi, and ask one question - I've been recently learning some information about ramdisk and its drivers (I knew they existed, but didnt know it's actually possible to boot system from it). As I learned there are a few "major" drivers that can be used - and the most popular one seems to be a Firadisk with Grub4Dos bootloader. With future in mind, I would like to ask about performance of those drivers - DDR5 and 64gb sticks seems to be going readily available in 2022, and consumer platforms will probably support 256GB ram (with 4x 64GB). With such big capacities, ramdisk could be readily used for something more than only OS and a browser installation (of course giving system at least 32GB of system memory itself).

Do you know which of drivers could be the most performant one, especially for 4kb segments?

#2 antonino61

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Posted 27 April 2021 - 02:45 PM

I do not know about 4kb segments, you are probably getting too technical for my mental array, but I would like to point out that also svbus is efficient for a driver. It is a few steps forward relative to firadisk, as far as I am concerned. Let us hope for a quicker one in the near future.



#3 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 27 April 2021 - 08:40 PM

Hmmm.
A ramdisk is a ramdisk.
A bootable ramdisk is a bootable ramdisk.
A non-bootable ramdisk is a non-bootable ramdisk.
 
The combination of grub4dos (loader) with Firadisk, Winvblock or Svbus (which are bootable ramdisks) is what makes the bootable ramdisk actually boot a system.
 
There are several non-bootable ramdisks, among them Imdisk and Arsenal (both developed by Olof Lagerkvist) and a whole lot of Commercial ones.

A non-bootable ramdisk is more likely (once the OS is booted from *something else*) to be more efficient than a bootable one because it has fewer requirements/restrictions than a bootable one.

But nothing prevents to have the (minimal or barebone) OS on the bootable ramdisk (likely less efficient) and *all the rest* on a second non-bootable ramdisk.(likely more efficient)

This approach is also smarter as during the booting, the smaller (or better compressed, it depends) is the boot image, the faster it will be the booting.
, and the loading of the second non-bootable image will be faster because it will happen in the OS (as opposed to the pre-OS phase i.e. BIOS or UEFI) which normally has better/faster drivers/cache/whatever.

:duff:
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#4 Xdxd321

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Posted 28 April 2021 - 06:11 AM

Well I thought about bootable and non-bootable combination too. I would like to have a minimal VHD consisting of W8.1 or W10 image (I have such images) on bootable ramdisk (4GB for Win + drivers). So yeah, I had something in mind too. If you say ot will be more efficient (it will surely be faster to load), then I would go with it (ones DDR5 and higher limit for consumer platforms would arrive).

Still my question remains - which driver for bootable ramdisk to choose? I saw some tests here, but there are for very old versions - from 2011 and 2014, as I saw. Also as I know Firadisk is only having MBR + static/fixed VHD restriction - is there any driver that can boot from UEFI + GPT system?

For non-bootable ones - I saw the best performing was SoftPerfect Ramdisk, so I think I would choose it.

Edited by Xdxd321, 28 April 2021 - 06:14 AM.


#5 antonino61

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Posted 28 April 2021 - 07:34 AM

i suggest u should check wimboot by wimb



#6 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 28 April 2021 - 12:35 PM

Basically the idea is that first the loader (grub4dos) copies the content of the image (optionally compressed) to an area in RAM (decompressing it if the image is compressed).

 

Then *somehow* a "hook" to that area of RAM is passed to the bootable ramdisk driver and the ramdisk driver *somehow* mounts that area of RAM as a physicaldrive, allowing the OS to boot..

 

This is - in theory - totally independent from the underlying firmware (BIOS or UEFI), what the driver essentially gets  is "assume that the area in RAM from address xxxxxx to address yyyyyyy represents a physicaldrive and expose that area to the OS as such". 

 

So you need a bootmanager/loader (such as grub4dos, now also available in a UEFI compatible version) and an OS loader (NTLDR or BOOTMGR, etc.) that can both understand and use the underlying firmware (BIOS or UEFI) functions/routines/interrupts/etc., but the sheer moment the ramdisk driver is loaded what was in use before is irrelevant.

 

The whole point of a NT based system is its HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) which on one hand is a PITA (as every hardware device needs a specific, working, hardware driver) but on the other hand it completely "shields" (or abstracts) the *whatever* was used to boot (BIOS or UEFI).

 

So - again in theory - there is not really-really a difference between bootable and non-bootable ramdisk drivers, the distinction is between ramdisk drivers that can accept parameters passed by the loader (bootable) and ramdisk drivers for which there is no way that the loader can pass these parameters (or that they can not be passed early enough during booting), (non-bootable).

 

In practice, right now, your best bet for a bootable ramdisk driver is SVBUS. 

 

 

:duff:

Wonko


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#7 antonino61

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Posted 28 April 2021 - 01:02 PM

so what I got by intuition coincides with what wonko so wonderfully explained above. svbus has so far been the best option.



#8 alacran

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Posted 28 April 2021 - 07:36 PM

*
POPULAR

I can't believe after so many post with so many words to answer a simple question, it wasn't properly answered.

 

Short answer:

 

It is said the faster is Primo Ramdisk (paid version), expensive and info available is obscure and only in chinese, so then it becomes a useless option.

 

Second best option is SvBus driver (freeware): SVBus_V1.2 signed 20200428

 

Usefull for grub4dos for Bios and for grub4dos for UEFI, also works with A1ve's grub2.

 

See this topic for info and program related to reduce OS foot print: Reducing Win10 and older OSs footprint

 

Use VHD_WIMBOOT from wimb to make your VHDs the easier way.

 

Hope this answer your question and give you links to start your tests.

 

alacran


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#9 antonino61

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Posted 28 April 2021 - 08:06 PM

My dear Alacrán, u have used fewer words than wonko but more words than me. AHAHAH



#10 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 29 April 2021 - 10:05 AM

I can also be brief:

Do the right thing!

 

 

 

I can't believe after so many post with so many words to answer a simple question, it wasn't properly answered.

Not that you actually answered it much differently or that the end result is anyway different. :frusty:

 

I can't believe that you actually listed something you do not actually advise, and then post EXACTLY THE SAME suggestions already posted:

1) SVbus (as the driver)
2) Wimboot (as something that was never asked for)

 

I like symmetrical situations, we are both non-believers.  :hyper:

 

The word for today is gratuitous which applies to both statements of reciprocal surprise.

:duff:

Wonko


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#11 wimb

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Posted 29 April 2021 - 11:43 AM

SVBus in VHD_WIMBOOT with Manual VHD_WIMBOOT.pdf

 

In About:  Apply in Compact LZX mode to make Mini 10x64 in 3.9 GB Fixed VHD for booting from RAMDISK

 

Booting in UEFI mode then 3,9 GB VHD loads from NVME SSD in 3 seconds into RAM which is pretty fast  :) - See More Info

 

In my opinion the speed of the UEFI or BIOS Firmware driver for loading VHD into RAM is most important and can vary a lot - between 3 and 83 seconds for 3.9 GB VHD

 

The SVBus driver is only used after loading into RAM and Win10x64 OS in that RAMDISK is extremely fast.

 

So what is the problem for you ?   :rolleyes:   :unsure:

 

The speed of loading the VHD into RAM Or the speed of Win10x64 OS running in RAMDISK  Or the speed to Boot Win10x64 OS after loading in RAMDISK ?


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#12 antonino61

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Posted 29 April 2021 - 12:23 PM

btw, any secret info on how primo ramdisk works as a faster alternative to svbus in order to engineer svbus so as to make it even faster than primo itself?



#13 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 29 April 2021 - 01:44 PM

btw, any secret info on how primo ramdisk works as a faster alternative to svbus in order to engineer svbus so as to make it even faster than primo itself?

Owww, come on. the moment that info is posted, won't be anymore secret. 

 

:duff:

Wonko


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#14 antonino61

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Posted 29 April 2021 - 01:59 PM

ahhahaha, that is a good one. I was referring to code, though. once it works, we'll still be left with something which is not freeware. so, we need to have its innermost technicalities disclosed in order to make open source software (e.g. svbus, which is the quickest available at the moment) as fast as, or faster than, it has been so far. so the problem has a twofold nature here.



#15 Xdxd321

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Posted 30 April 2021 - 08:45 PM

Thank you for your attention, especially @wimb and @alacran.

As you stated - performance with ramdisk is insane, and that's what I aim for - my latest upgrade to the NVME SSD (Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB) have made a huge difference vs SATA SSD, but I feel there is a possibility for more improvement - especially during multitasking and very intensive disk operations. Also that ram isn't having TBW parameter and you can write all over it, without any hestation that drive will one time just fail at you. 

 

This gave a me a lot to think about, maybe even about upgrading right now to 128GB ram, and moving most of my apps to such system.

I still don't know, if there is some possibility to have automated saving to VHD content onto disk, if you need to reboot - is there such script/program/driver that could provide such functionality right now?


Edited by Xdxd321, 30 April 2021 - 08:46 PM.





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