Re: RAM drive for XP possible?

Actually, I think Phil W was right when he mentioned you might be better to
modify your approach to the problem. I've never seen a brand name 300Gig
drive for $60 but it's possible, I suppose. Either way, drives aren't that
expensive.
While I'm on drives, SATA drives, in particular the 150MB/S kind, really
aren't that much of an improvement over EIDE (PATA) drives. The 300's and
600's I've heard, don't know, would allow some speed increases depending on
other bottlenecks in the system (front side bus speed, etc. etc.). IMO a
SATA is better, but without going into more detail, it's not going to help
your problem much.

Did you check out the Corel newsgroup I mentioned? Your'e quite apt to get
some good advice there; most know what's up with your program.

Your idea to use a 2 Gig RAM disk, IMO, is not the right method. I also
think I know why you think that, so forgive me if this sounds derogatory: I
do NOT mean it that way:
In the old DOS world, any flavor of it, that would have been the right
idea. But in XP, using a separate RAM disk would only serve to unnecessary
time to the process because it would actually take MORE machine cycles to
get the data to/from RAM than it would to allow XP to use its own RAM Disk,
called the Page File.

You should research the Page File operations.
XP maximizes RAM use at all times, so even if you install 4 Gig or RAM, XP
is going to try to use every single nibble of it. IF XP can manage it, you
will never see much vacant RAM in XP. If RAM gets filled, or nearly filled,
then, using a priority basis, XP begins to farm out to the Page File any
data or instructions it doesn't have room for to disk to the Page File.
Data in the Page File and RAM are constantly changing, based on what XP
thinks you might do next, and they're in constant motion depending on what
you're doing.
Trying to use a 2 Gig RAM drive would simply be adding more machine
cycles to the mix because now I think the OS would need to keep track of,
and use, the Page File AND the RAM disk, each living in different places on
the hard drive and the RAM disk having fragmentation issues, which the Page
File does not have. The Page File always lives at the same addresses on the
hard drive; a RAM drive would not. So now you get more head movements and
possibly thrashing of the drive heads as it has to switch between the two
depending on what's going on.
For program execution, 4 Gig of RAM is almost surely going to be able to
hold all executable code you need.
For rendering (I edit Video, BTW, a very RAM instensive process), RAM is
liable to fill and you'll still end up using the Page File, but a LOT less
of it since in theory it'll only hold data that isn't being used at any
particular instant in time. Here it gets into prefetching et al, and I'm
not up on going that deep into things.
So, a 4 Gig RAM with a 300 MB SATA drive would definitly provide
noticeable, likely accaptable, operation with the Page File at work.

IMO you don't need 4 Gig. of RAM. 2 Gig, IMO would be the very most an XP
machine would need to make the most efficient use, and in your case,
probably a use-dependent Page File size. When I render video I get Page
Files in the order of about 3 Gig, once maxing out at 6, where the Page File
was so large it took a minute or more for it to bring itself back down to
size. So, you can also make the Page File too large. That's why, to start,
one should always first allow windows to manage the size of the Page File,
and use measurements later to change it if needed.

Also, I'm not sure what your reference is since you haven't described your
system, but rendering is a very intensive process. Even on my 3 GHz clodk,
800 MHz bus, dual drive, dual cpu, 1 Gig RAM, an 80 Gig IDE and 160 Gig
150MB/S SATA, one hour of compressed video can take several hours to render,
depending on the complexity of the render, number of fades, transitions,
etc.. The bottleneck for me is the RAM on my video card; it's a couple
years old and just not fast enough for the rest of hte system now. It's
next on my upgrade list<g>.

Another thing that CAN, not WILL, speed up operations is more than one
physical hard drive. That way the program operating system is being read
from one while the Page File is being kept on the other drive. That allows
almost, not quite, parallel disk i/o which can speed things up, too, since
you now have twice the number of disk heads at work. That will help a lot
with program speed when the Pafe File is in use. Howver, it may not make
much difference to the rendering process dependign on how & where it's done.
Once you get data i/o to your video card maximized, that's as fast as your'e
going to go. Period. Usually the video card turns out to be a bottlenect
on many systems and most people don't realize it.

Sorry for being so verbose; hope I"ve made at least a little sense. I don't
guarantee my accuracy and reserve the right to have made mistakes<g>.
40 Gig single hard drive is way too small. You really need a second hard
drive, 80 Gig or more, 7200 or 10k rpm or SATA 300 min, and up to 2 Gig of
RAM on the motherboard. Optimally you'd replace the 40 Gig with an 80
minimum too.

Now, here are the questions that should have been asked first and right
away:
-- Describe the task at hand, AND why you think you are using the correct
tool for the task.
-- Have you done disk cleanup? Start | Programs | Accessories | System
Tools | Disk Cleanup
-- Followed by Defrag? Same as above but Disk Defragmenter
-- Cleared internet cache?
-- Have you checked Event Viewer for errors and warnings?
-- Do you have any scanners, such as anti-virus heuristics and/or scanning
every file you create/modify/move?
-- Have you attempted to use MSConfig to stop background tasks and other
programs that load at startup to see if it helps the speed? Always be
disconnected from the 'net when doing power operations.
-- MSConfig is a TOOL; NOT an answer to the problem. It's how to find
the problem, verify it, but not to fix it.
-- Do you make sure all other programs are shut down on the desktop?
The above will give you more processor attention and much more effieicnt use
of current RAM plus might make the rendering tiem acceptable.
I just have a problem imagining "rendering" time beign unacceptable for a
"picture". But that might be because I don't know what "rendering" means,
to you or "picture" for that matter<g>.

You really should describe your system here to get more meaningful input.
Brand, Clock speed, front bus speed, RAM, Drive, video card & RAM, current
rendering times, times you hope to achieve, file sizes, total and by layer
if applicable, etc.. There may well be better groups to post this query to
than this one and such info might result in a referral.

Oh, the tech guys at e-frontier? I don't think they're up on your
question - e.g. they're guessing, just as I have done.

Back to your origianl question: Yes, it can be done, but IMO It's not the
solution you need. So, this is probably the time for you to either bypass
the advice so far and go try your original idea, or proceed with the various
advice provided here. You're in control either way.

Pop`





***** charles wrote:
"Pop`" <nodoby@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:O7lXMoQ0GHA.4956@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi,

1. You can find some poser users over at cnews.com newsgroup,
corel.paintshoppro_graphics group in particular. They seem to be
pretty knowledgeable folks but I'm not a poser user, so don't really
know. It's a moderated group, and does have some, shall we say,
egotistical people there; just in case you come across them<g>.
Most of the moderation is by bot, so it might take half an hour or
so for your post to show up, seldom any longer than that.

2. The PageFile actually IS a RAM drive of sorts and perhaps what
you need is a little management of the Page File (swap file in older
windows systems). You might read up on the Page File usage; I
suspect it's what you need since Poser is a Windows program; I
think, and possibly more RAM along with it.

3. It IS possible to make a RAM drive in XP without shelling out
bucks, in other words, free, but you might have to download a couple
of programs to do so. If you really want to make your own RAM
drive, let me know and I'll go see how it was done.
I thought I was going to just tell you how, but I now notice
ramdrive.sys isn't part of XP, so I'll need to research how it was
done in the apps I have.
If you have an old copy of DOS laying around, it's highly likely
XP will run the ramdrive.sys, making it easy on you. I've used many
DOS6.22 files in XP and had no problem with them. So far. I know,
famous last words!

4. You might also ask the ram drive question over in
alt.msdos.batch.nt. That's mostly for batch files, but you'll find
some very helpful and very knowledgeable people there who will
likely have a zillion ways to create the ram file with XP<g>.

5. If you're increasing RAM in your machine, especially to 4 Gig,
I'd wait and see if that plus the new page file size to go with it
doesn't solve your issues. The normal rule of thumb for a page file
is 1 1/2 times the amount of RAM you have, but with 4 Gig, there's a
different set of rules. If you can't research those or don't
already have the info, try Google, or come back here and ask. I
think people right here probably have the approximate max
recommended size although it's a little, uhh, "adjustable" depending
on the usage. Supply as much detail as you can if you come back for
that. It'll be needed. IMO initially I'd think starting with
letting Windows determine the page file size would be the way to go;
monitor that and see what it's doing. There are both pros and cons
to using large page files.

Hope I haven't talked down to you; couldn't tell what your expertise
might be from your post.

HTH
Pop`

The tech guys at e-frontier were a little encouraging. It
seems the rendering engine (Firefly) is not very fast in and
of itself. I asked them about both an external eSATA
raid array and a ram drive. It seems that the best bang
for the buck is the ram drive idea. It will take several
days just for the shipping of the ram and I haven't yet
ordered it. What I would like to do is put 4G in the
motherboard and then set the upper 2G as a ram drive.
Then put the swap file and the images in the ram drive.
Problem is the swap file size tends to be 1.5 times as
big as ram. That would make the swap file 3G and it
wouldn't fit on the ram drive. Then I am stuck putting
the swap file on the C: drive, in this case an ata-100
40G Western Digital, not too fast. Maybe I can
manually adjust the swap file down to a small enough size
to fit on the ram drive along with the pictures being
manipulated. We'll see. Anything on the ram drive
process would be appreciated. I have been googling
the problem too.

With over 30 years experience and a Ph.D. in Computers
Don't worry about talking down to me, or over my head.
I appreciate any and all help.

ah, those old DOS days...

later,
charles.......

***** charles wrote:
Hi all,

I have a motherboard that supports up to 4G of ram.
I would like to segment half of that to a ram drive.
Can XP do this on its' own or is there any software
out there that can do this is either free/cheap?

thanks,
charles.....



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