Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

loren s · Jul 13, 2003, 09:44 PM

Hey I saw the posts about how a ram disk will super charge the programs in it. So I tried a ram disk program and dropped safari in it. And poof ... the same speed. Then tried photoshop elements...poof the same slow speed.

I don't see the HUGE or any at all speed increase.
Could somebody please tell me how I can find if it is doing anything, or how I can make it work.

I realy need photoshop elements to go faster.

I made the ram disk 200mb
white ibook
10.2.4
320 ram
500 mhz
rage 3d card

Brass · Jul 13, 2003, 09:56 PM

What RAM disk utility are you using? I didn't know there were any for OS X.

Mac OS X uses a completely different memory model than Mac OS 9. In order for a RAM disk to make any difference, you would have to make sure that it was never paged out to swap space, and I don't know if that's really feasible.

Even if it could be done, I don't think it would make the same speed difference as on OS 9.

loren s · Jul 13, 2003, 10:17 PM

ramBunctious
http://www.clarkwoodsoftware.com/rambunctious/

Jaguar Cache Cleaner
http://www.northernsoftworks.com/jag...hecleaner.html

And yes I have heard that stuff like launching zipps . Like safari 16 bounces becomes 2

and camino 3 bounces. and so on.
Plus the speed to do stuff is greatly increased
bookmarks button in safari also zips.

But not for little me.

DBvader · Jul 13, 2003, 10:27 PM

there is a good chance that you have a slow computer, and that is why things are going fast. my friends ibook/700 often seems unbearably slow, and he said it was worse before, when he has limited RAM.

loren s · Jul 13, 2003, 10:33 PM

umm. maybe you said the reverse of what you were thinking.
I was saying that my computer is basic speed not slow just basic usable. And but it dies on photoshop elements while painting.

And I had hoped that a ram disk would make it faster as I had heard. But I see no speed increase at all with the programs that I put into the disk

oh well

Brass · Jul 13, 2003, 11:20 PM

How much real RAM do you have? How much is assigned to your RAM disk?

If you use a significant amount of it for a RAM disk, you will cause all sorts of slow downs due to everything else not having enough RAM to work with, and paging to disk flat out.

Brass · Jul 13, 2003, 11:28 PM

Did you read that products page about using a RAM disk on OS X?

http://www.clarkwoodsoftware.com/ram...ous/RDOSX.html

Have you checked to see if you really have enough RAM to make it worthwhile? (ie, use "top" to check for pageouts. If you have ANY pageouts, the use of a RAM disk is dubious, if you have lots of pageouts, you should NOT try using a RAM disk).

WJMoore · Jul 13, 2003, 11:30 PM

Originally posted by Brass:
How much real RAM do you have? How much is assigned to your RAM disk?

All that information is in the original post.

Perhaps try a smaller RAM disk as 200Mb only leaves 120Mb for the rest of the OS and apps which probably isn't enough. I would try 100Mb. Also a RAM disk will only speed up operations like reading from disk to RAM (eg. program launching). If an app isn't being hampered by such operations (which I expect Safari isn't really) then you probably won't see much of a speed boost.

WM

loren s · Jul 13, 2003, 11:33 PM

have 320 mb
tried 200 mb
then 100
and 50

nothing. zilch.
they all have no increase.

As I read in older stuff some people with bodi blues even had speed increases. with just 64mb ram.
Like also they would put their work progy in their and then speed down the hard drive so it would be quiet.
Never mind how on earth you could get the system finder into this.

well. cheese.

WJMoore · Jul 13, 2003, 11:36 PM

Oh and if you are so inclined you can create RAM disks without additional software using built-in CLI tools. See my post in another thread.

WM

loren s · Jul 13, 2003, 11:48 PM

hey thanks. Besides it most likely wont work anyhow. As I tried both programs. and eh..

would you happen to know how to test to see if it is doing anything at all. Some sort of terminal test code.

thankyou

WJMoore · Jul 13, 2003, 11:55 PM

I just created a RAM disk with hdid and put Firebird in it, I didn't see any real improvement in launch speed so I don't think it's worth bothering with.

Originally posted by loren s:
hey thanks. Besides it most likely wont work anyhow. As I tried both programs. and eh..

would you happen to know how to test to see if it is doing anything at all. Some sort of terminal test code.

thankyou

By, "test to see if it is doing anything at all", do you mean the RAM disk or the program?

WM

loren s · Jul 14, 2003, 12:05 AM

most likly both. All I know of is typing top in terminal. To see the cpu change numbers like mad.

Anything else that would help. ?

WJMoore · Jul 14, 2003, 12:12 AM

Originally posted by loren s:
most likly both. All I know of is typing top in terminal. To see the cpu change numbers like mad.

Anything else that would help. ?

In that case when you create a RAM disk with hdid it will return the path to the disk it created. eg. /dev/disk2 it also remains running so doing top -Uyourusername will list all you processes and within that list will be a hdid -nomount ram://128000 for example. All that isn't overly relevant to your original query though so I wouldn't concern yourself too much with it.

As for testing if the RAM disk is doing anything worthwhile I don't know of an official way to do this. I think the only tests are subjective ones like launch times.

WM

Brass · Jul 14, 2003, 12:20 AM

hello...

When using "top" in the terminal, look at the "pageouts". The CPU usage is not much use, it's the pageouts that tells you how efficiently your RAM is being used. You really want this to be 0 for a RAM disk to be of any use.

stew · Jul 14, 2003, 02:40 AM

RAM disks are useless in a modern system with virtual memory, as no one can guarantee you that it doesn't get paged out to the hard drive. Since the system should do some smart caching anyway, the second launch of a program is faster anyway.