SoftPerfect RAM Disk can create virtual disks that reside on your system’s RAM. The main advantage of doing this is that you can access data much faster than from a standard hard disk. In addition, it avoids the excessive use of the disk resulting from frequent read/write operations, which gradually reduces your hard drive’s lifespan.
The tool lets you create multiple RAM disks and assign drive letters to them. Moreover, you can use various files systems, including RAW, FAT, FAT32, and NTFS. It is possible to assign a given size to each virtual disk, as long as there is enough RAM memory left for that purpose. Luckily, it is possible to enable data compression to save space. After a new disk is created, you can access its contents just as you do with any other drive. When I tried copying data between two virtual disks, it was able to do it at a very high speed.
The good news is that the program can overcome a disadvantage logically derived from storing data in a volatile memory: everything there is lost if the computer is turned off or there is a power failure. To avoid it, the tool lets you create an image of the RAM disk on your hard disk. Thus, RAM contents are automatically backed up to your hard drive. The image files can later be mounted to a virtual drive so that you can browse the files there.
All in all, SoftPerfect RAM Disk can help you increase your system performance by allowing faster data transfer speeds. Its limitation is that it requires reserving part of your RAM, which will not be available for other programs. Besides, the tool may be unnecessary if your computer has a solid state drive. The product is, fortunately, shareware and can be tried at no cost.
v3.2 [Jun 3, 2011]
* Application has been made fully 64-bit when installed on 64-bit systems.
* Fixed occasional GUI startup crash when boot-time volumes were in use.
* Mounted image files can now also be ejected from Windows Explorer.
* Fixed a bug that could randomly cause the system to freeze.
* Added automatically created folders on a boot-time RAM disk.
* Added periodic saving RAM disk contents to an image file for a logon-time RAM disk.
* Fixed editing RAM disks with an associated image file (resulted in a file locked message).
* Fixed incompatibility with Rollback RX and a few other issues.
* Added command line options support and environment variables support for automatically launched applications.
* Added waiting until a launched application fully starts before launching another to prevent system slowdown.
* Added showing the actual file system instead of RAW and real disk size for image-based disks.
* Added command line switches support to create and manipulate RAM disks via a command line interface.
Create, extend shrink, resize, move, delete, merge, & hide hard disk partitions
