Speedup your web-browser using a ram disk as your cahce folder

[steronius]

I've tried this technique and have been applying it to my computers lately, so i figured i would share it. -- I did not invent the technique, but certainly appreciate it.

By default, your browser caches file to harddrive at every use. By utilizing a ram drive you will see significantly better efficiency in web browsing. Here's how:

I've tried 3 different RamDrive softwares and have have had the least problems with VSuite RamDrive (free version) from http://www.romexsoftware.com/.

Create a new RamDrive with this application. I chose to assign letter Z: to this RamDrive. I use both Explorer and Firefox, so I chose to make a 128MB drive. If you only use one browser, make a 64MB RamDrive. I believe By default Firefox only caches 50MB. (which can be changed through "about:config")

Once your RamDrive is created, you can change your cache folder(s) to this RamDrive:

For Internet Explorer go to Tools>Internet Options>Browsing History>Settings>Move Folder and choose the RamDrive letter and the temp folder (i.e. Z:\temp ). While you are at it, change the Disk Space to use option to something more appropriate, i choose 64MB.

For FireFox 3+, enter "about:config" in the address bar. You'll see a warning screen, click the "I'll be careful" button. Right-click anywhere in the list of items and select New>String. Enter "browser.cache.disk.parent_directory" (no quotes), then enter your RamDrive letter and folder as the new value (i.e. Z:\temp). If you are using an older Firefox you may want to search first as i think the key name is different.


The same concept will work on a Mac OSX. You can use "Esperance DV" or "MakeRAMDisk 1.0" to create a RamDrive.

If you do not like the results, simply change the folder back in Explorer or delete the key from firefox, and remove/uninstall the RamDrive software.

Happy Surfing!

 

[lemon-tree]

Interesting. I never thought to use RAMdisks like that. Getting a pretty amazing read speed of 1100MB/sec.
Thanks for the tip.

Edit: Also, for Mac users, the path to enter in Firefox will be '/Volumes/name-of-ramdisk' instead of 'Z:\temp'

 

[Smith6612]

You would be surprised to see what a RAMDrive is useful for. My gaming PC has 8GB of RAM, clocked right now at 1,600Mhz. Just for kicks a while back I decided to load my entire installation of Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit to the drive, telling it to not boot off of the hard disk. I had Vista booted in under 5 seconds and was at my desktop within seconds. Unfortunately, it wasn't practical to do that since Vista's install was using up 6 of the 8 Gigabytes of RAM. I can still boot Vista up within 20 seconds on my RAID 0 array and have my desktop good to go by then, so I've stuck to it.

 

[lemon-tree]

How do you boot from a RAM disk?

 

[Zubair]

I got an error while installing RAM disk

"This Program cannot be installed on Windows NT version 6.0 or later."

So I cannot install it on windows 7

 

[Smith6612]

How do you boot from a RAM disk?

It requires a bit of playing around, but you basically do not want your RAM to lose power when you have it set up to ask as a RAMDisk. The moment it does, it corrupts and you have to load the data back in it from the hard drive. I used a program which could be started via CD which I can't recall the name of to do so with booting Vista from RAM entirely.

 

[xemotso]

OMFG, Thank you so much!
This is so awesome!

 

[jtaguser0089]

THANKS! This totally helped alot.. Thanks again

 

[razryva]

i'll try...
thank you mate!

 

[mavr1c]

A most interesting and useful solution! Thanks for the info, I will certainly giveit a try and see how it improves the browsing experienece. It would have been nice to see some benchmarking compariosons between the Disk and RAMDrive experinece! You have done your bit by identifying the opportunity and the FREE tool. Thanks Much!

 

[steronius]

I'm not certain of the significance on newer machines, but it's a fact that it speeds up my older pc which is a P4 w/ HT 3.4GH 2GB ram 10k 70GB main drive. This machine is starting to show it's age, and this was a grand improvement. My "test" is simply using google's image search. It is slow to display a page of thumbnails caching to disk, but quick to display a page w/ "Ram Cache".

Another use i've found is setting my SandBoxie(.org) to save to Ram also.

I've played with setting windows "temp" environment variables to Ram, but with only 2GB I really have to choose limits.

Thank you all for the thumbs up.

Sorry, but I cannot locate a freeware RamDisk that works on Win7. Maybe someone else will and post it.

For Linux kernel 2.4+ use command "sudo mkdir /mnt/ramdisk" then "sudo mount none /mnt/ramdisk -t tmpfs" to create RamDisk. You can probably just script it into your startup. (Ubuntu users can use pre-existing /dev/shm.

 

[ganggumalam]

thanks friend