What Is RAM Disk?

If you've ever had to wait for a hard drive to load up, you know it can feel like an eternity. RAM disks are becoming increasingly popular. They provide a hard drive's speed and storage space but with much better performance. RAM disks come in two forms: hardware and software. In the hardware form, a RAM disk uses dedicated software to treat a block from the RAM pool like a hard drive. With this type of RAM disk, you'll have all the benefits of having dedicated storage without the hassle of installing it. In software form, RAM disks take advantage of RAM's speed by allowing you to create virtual drives managed by your computer's operating system. This RAM disk can be made on any machine with enough free memory (usually around 4GB). A RAM disk is a special kind of data storage that can speed up the I/O process performance, but it's not your typical storage. RAM stands for Random Access Memory and is used in computers to store the programs and data that the computer's processor uses. RAM is fast because it works using electrical circuits, while other types of storage, like hard drives and flash drives, use magnetism instead. Since RAM is faster than different types of storage, it makes sense to use it as a place to store data so that you can access it more quickly. But there was one major hurdle before this could happen: RAM is volatile (it loses its contents when power is removed) and uses different techniques for accessing data than traditional hard drives or flash drives. If you're like us, you've always wanted to have the option to install a dedicated program on your computer and separate a specific portion of memory to serve as a hard drive, but without having to deal with the hassle of virtualization. RAM disks are the answer! With RAM disks, you can have all programs running from the virtual RAM disk you set up, and it does not require any tweaking. All that's needed is to install one dedicated program on your computer and set up a virtual RAM disk.