What Do You Need To Create A RAM Disk?

If you have decided that a RAM disk is a good idea for your system, this is what you need :

Note that if you intend to use the RAM disk to run copy and write benchmark tests, you must make sure it is large enough to hold the files you are using for the tests. Take, for example, the two sets of test files we use in our copy and write tests (e.g. in the 256 GB Kingston UHS-I SDXC Card review) :

• Large Files : 5 high-resolution videos (2,002,511,061 bytes)
• Small Files : 2,527 mix of low, medium and high-resolution photos (2,000,704,583 bytes)

Although both sets are 4 GB in size, we needed another 2 GB of space as work space, so we created a 6 GB RAM disk. The good news is if you made a mistake, you can always redo the RAM disk without restarting Windows.

What File System Should You Use?

Even though a RAM disk uses your system memory for storage, it still behaves like a hard disk drive, albeit a very fast one. After creating the RAM disk, you will be asked to select a file system. So what should you choose? NTFS, FAT32 or FAT16?

As a RAM disk is used with the expectation that data stored in it will be wiped out whenever the computer restarts or shutdown, data safety or persistence is irrelevant. That's why there are guides that recommend the FAT16 file system because it has less overhead and is thus perceived to be faster.

However, the FAT16 file system has many limitations, chiefly :

• a maximum volume (partition) size of 2 GB, with a 32 KB cluster size
• limited to just 65,460 files in the entire volume (partition).

Even if you are expecting to limit yourself to a RAM disk of 2 GB or less, we would still advise against using the FAT16 file system because of the file number limit. This could be a problem, especially if you are planning to use it to store the Windows TEMP folder and the file cache of your Internet browsers.

The newer FAT32 and NTFS file systems avoid those problems with a maximum volume (partition) size of 16 TB and 16 EB respectively. They also boast a much expanded limit on the number of files at 268 million per volume, and just under 4.3 billion per volume respectively.

The FAT32 file system should have a lower overhead than NTFS, since it doesn't support journaling. On the other hand, the NTFS is an extent-based file system, which helps to reduce internal file fragmentation. NTFS also allows for faster file look-up times due to its superior (B+ trees) indexing algorithm.

Ultimately, we recommend that you stick with NTFS for your RAM disk's file system. You can try FAT32, if you want to maximise performance, but we certainly wouldn't recommend FAT16.

Got all that? Alright then, let's start creating a new RAM disk!

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