

This can be a significant negative when the shutdown is unexpected, but if you choose to save your app caches (such as a browser cache) or other sensitive data to a RAM drive, you can easily set the software to ensure it will be wiped when you power down your PC. There are also potential security advantages because RAM is erased when a computer’s power supply is cut off. Running our own quick benchmark test using XBench on a Macbook Air showed that write speeds were an average of 4.5 times faster than the built-in SSD and read speeds were 6.3 times faster. It will be multiple times faster than even the fastest solid-state drive.

The main benefit of a RAM drive is its increased read and write speeds compared to an SSD or hard drive. There are several benefits to setting up and using a RAM drive, which should influence when you use one. Once set up, you just need to decide what you will be using your new drive for. So, if you have 8GB of total RAM and create a 4GB RAM drive, your system will be left with just 4GB of usable RAM (which will impact general system performance).Ĭonversely, if you have 12GB of RAM and find that only 8 to 10GB of it is routinely in use, you could spare a couple of those gigabytes for a RAM drive. When the drive is mounted-which it will be every time you boot your computer-any memory that is allocated to the drive will not be able to function as traditional RAM.Īs such, you should only use excess RAM for the disk.
