OS in RamDisk

[Sligolad]

Opened this thread to help all post their experiences and learnings with OS install in RamDisk which makes a great improvement over SSDs.
Will post some recollections on the install over the coming days and help where I can.

I neglected earlier to thank the great work on getting this working by our German friends on http://tinyurl.com/aktives-hoeren
Particularly Horst who seems to have done a lot of the work on figuring this out.

[Octagon]

Hi Pearse,

As a start my old posting from within the MQn thread might be helpfull. I would like to encourage everyone to give it a try as you will recognize a major step in sq.

With 16GB RAM available it will be no problem. What I see from a lot of reports trying to reduce the size, that is where the trouble starts. Mainly this is tried due to less availability of RAM. I do not to use the R2 possibility to reduce storage use as it harms again the performance adding additional compression/decompressing tasks. My lowest RAMOS VHD is 8GB and I have heard about versions where R2 has been stripped down to 2.9GB which allows 8GB RAM system to be used. But I am not concentrating on the lowest storage for the moment but sq. ;) In case you are interested in more details, I would be happy to share more of my learnings from trying to reduce the size of R2.

In short:
I built a VHD from a new, but full installed R2 on a 10GB partition. I built the VHD not from within that R2 but from another one as that has less hurdles.

Add the VHD with "EasyBCD" to your bootmanager.

Boot the VHD and install Firadisk driver to the VHD. You need this driver to boot into RAM later on. Switch "Testsigning on" with bcdedit.

Reboot to other R2 you have used to built VHD. Install Grub4Dos into your bootmanager. EasyBCD offenes a way to do that as well but I have not tested that.

With next reboot you should have Grub4Dos as another choice in your bootmanager. Ok, boot into the R2 you used to built everything. Look for "Menu.lst" which I have in a folder called "BOOT_BCD". Edit menu.lst to point the way where the VHD is stored.

Reboot, choose Grub4dos and choose your VHD. Here you go with OS fully running in RAM.

Ok Gordon, as mentioned in short. There are many traps and many little steps I needed to learn over the last couple of weeks. But the result is an amazing jump in quality.

I know there are a couple of folks looking for smaller VHD. I decided to go with 16GB of RAM and a 10GB VHD as I wanted to know in principle what would be the result. I have even been down till 8GB and shrinking is no problem. But the risk of more hurdles grows. I concentrated on testing quality instand of shrinking.

I will be happy to provide more details, but I guess you folks have much more knowledge as I am just a blind one trying to get what I think is possible. There are also a lot of details of the dedicated Audio PC missing, there is another setup with a standalone Convolver PC in addition to the Audio PC working with both setups OS in RAM.

Take care
Thomas

And additional learnings....

After managing to run the OS from RAM I was able to identify some tools that are helpfull. You will find them on the net:

Disk2VHD - Builds a VHD from an existing partition. Use the VHD format, don't VHDX. Uncheck shadow copy! There are additional changes needed if building it from the running system, you better run it from another OS on another partition/stick.

Grub4Dos - Take a look at their page, great working for booting into RAM as a 2nd bootmanager in the Windows bootmanager.

EasyBCD- Amazing tool which makes it easy to attach any VHD to the Windows bootmanager, rename it, sort the ranking etc. In addition it may help you to get Grub4Dos installed but I did that manually, check it out and report back ;)

Firadisk driver - needed to boot into RAM. Not certified driver, so testsigning needs to be switched on.

As soon as you have the VHD running from the Windows bootmanager you can install drivers, software etc. All will be stored in the VHD and later be available when you are booting this VHD into RAM. Never forget where you are: Any changes in the VHD bootet in RAM will be gone after rebooting! Great for testing, but .....
You can easily backup different versions if you just copy the VHD before changes in another folder.

Finally some hurdles I needed to overcome:
* VHD names are not working with blanks in Grub4Dos
* Have enough RAM. Shrinking is possible but a timekiller because of unexpected rebooting. I am running 16GB of RAM, my test VHDs have been working fine with 10GB which leaves around 2GB open space for the ramdisk and additional 6GB RAM for the running OS for my music files. I have been down to 8GB VHD without any problems.
* I build a dedicated Audio PC, very pure and focussed on sq. You might see more hurdles if you have more stuff running.
* Check the net, you will find details. I have used that stuff without being an expert, you can get there as well! :)

Finally, just start with a pure player like MQn and some files for testing. Watch the result and enjoy. From that you can build the next level. I have meanwhile different VHDs for testing purpose, there is one pure MQn in Minimal Server, one JPlay in Core Mode, all fully optimized with AO1.30 and running online convolving with Acourate. I am testing VLC in Minimal Server in the same configuration for BlueRay, DVD and Internet access.

Results: Ok, i have mentioned a bit in the last post. Just from the technical perspective the activaties of the system are absolutely down and below measurement. MQn is amazing running in the mentioned setup with 0-1% CPU activity (overall activity not only MQn itself), remember including online convolving. With loading of the files I reach a max of 2-3% very short in between, for the whole system! The JPlay version has a bit higher activities: Minimum 3% maximum 5% allthough running in Core Mode. This is what you hear....

Next steps: I am optimizing the usage of the cores with Taggerts "tasker"; the convolver will be optimized as I recognized some possibilities, VLC version .....

But I need a lot of time just to listen now :D (Anne Bisson, With a little help from my friends; the right song at the right time) A special thank you to Heinz for all the exchange and support, we got it working!

Hope that is helpfull for you folks!

Enjoy the music
Thomas

[Sligolad]

Hi Pearse,
I am not sure what you mean with "compacted VHD File"? But I understand you have the whole OS in RAM, not just MQn loaded onto a RAMDisc? Your comments show you got there :D great!

As mentioned before the whole R2 2012 will work without any compression if you build a 10GB VHD. That will leave 2GB space for other files like MQn and music files. ;) Boot this VHD with Grub4Dos into RAM which leaves 6GB RAM of a 16GB RAM availability for the RAM OS. You will be able to confirm what Pearse, myself and others are reporting for yourself.

What I see from a lot of reports trying to reduce the size, that is where the trouble starts. Mainly this is tried due to less availability of RAM. I do not to use the R2 possibility to reduce storage use as it harms again the performance as it adds additional compression/decompressing tasks. My lowest RAMOS VHD is 8GB and I have heard about versions where R2 has been stripped down to 2.9GB which allows 8GB RAM system to be used. But I am not concentrating on the lowest storage for the moment but sq. ;) In case you are interested in more details, I would be happy to share more of my learnings from trying to reduce the size of R2. But I didn't want to go to much off topic.

And yes, having tested MQN, BHE, JPlay and Foobar, MQn is still best in sq. Pearse, i can also confirm your measurements about activity in general.

I can only encourage everyone to try, it is a major improvement.

Just my 2cents
Thomas

Hi Thomas, I am going to go through a lot of what you already know but still explain what I did for those who have no idea of what we are talking about here.
I created a full VHD 12 Gb (System 2) off a copy of Server 2012 R2 Essentials I had on a USB stick.
When I got this setup with Autologon, Drivers, etc, I ran AO 1.26b to change the installation to Minimal Server mode, not sure if this makes much of a difference to the compacting step but I did it anyway so as to have a full working VHD in Minimal Server mode.

Next I ran the compacting tool on this Full VHD (Minimal Server) which strips away files in the background and ended up with an Small VHD on another 7Gb VHD with a couple of Gb to spare in there after the compacting /stripping away had finished and this becomes System 3.

Both of these VHD's are now sitting in the C Drive and are bootable along with the original OS, these 3 choices are available as multi boot options on start-up.

After System 3 was compacted I booted it (small VHD with a unique name allocated by the compacting tool) and indeed a lot was stripped away and I think the OS was about 3 or 4 Gb.
I seen that JPlay, my MQN folder, AO folder had been stripped out during this compacting so I had to copy these back into the now running small VHD OS.
Each of these programs were installed again and on running music I found that all the PPA USB Card and Amanero drivers for the DAC were OK as music played fine again.
I then ran AO 1.26b again and the Optimiser to really clean it up and shut off all unnecessary services, drivers, etc. and still everything was working OK, including Mqnload and JPlay.

At that point then I ran the Grub4dos which was added as a fourth option on boot and selected the Firadisk RamDisk option.
This is the only point where I had difficulty in the whole process which I had repeated twice with 2 different SSD's with a Server 2012 OS on them.

Once I got the RamDisk to count to 7000 as it loaded to memory and it started up finally it has been very reliable since.
Going back and editing the Compacted VHD (select it on reboot) by adding latest MQN files and the Japanese File ReWriter did not cause any issues.

The only hiccups I found were when I edited the boot files to have the initial computer boot file set with Grub4dos as top selection and then Grub4dos application set to have RamDisk as first selection.
After making these changes the loading of the RamDisk would stop once or twice as it counted up to 7000, once I rebooted and it counted up OK it then would reliably boot again once it got there once.

To summarise I have 9Gb available in RAM after RamDisk boots and the Boot process from power up shows a multiple boot selection first with a short timer where I have Grub4dos as defaulted top selection (it is easy to go down to the other 3 systems when needed).
Then Grub4dos window opens with about 5 system options (there are options in there I could just edit out) but I have Firadisk RamDisk set with a very short timer so it boots to a window which counts to 7000 quickly and then RamDisk Windows OS appears and I am good to go like a normal installation of windows.
Takes about a minute from start I think.

I will do some edits on the latest guide and post it to a DropBox soon to help explain better.
Cheers, Pearse.

[Octagon]

Next I ran the compacting tool on this Full VHD (Minimal Server) which strips away files in the background and ended up with an Small VHD on another 7Gb VHD with a couple of Gb to spare in there after the compacting /stripping away had finished and this becomes System 3.

Hi Pearse,
Got it, we talk about different approaches but there are always different ways to reach a goal. ;)

I have not used any "compacting" but a new server installation which is after setup about 8GB in size. That is why I choosed 10GB for my VHD. That size allows full flexibility if you change optimization or mode. One would need that for example at the moment you update any driver or change player.
Regarding your hiccups:
You can easily build a VHD from an existing partition with the tool disk2vhd.
You might use the Tool EasyBCD for changes to the bootmanager regarding names, order or adding VHD's.
For changes of the Grub4Dos Bootmanager you just need to edit the file "menue.lst" which you should find in the folder "boot_bcd".
I have mentioned these tips in my old post and guess they will work with your approach as well.
;)
Thomas

[Sligolad]

You can easily build a VHD from an existing partition with the tool disk2vhd.
Thomas

Now that would be nice Thomas if I could get that to work, it would save building new VHD's from scratch.

Guess I would just load the Firadisk driver to the VHD created by disk2vhd using my optimised existing SSD OS and then figure out how to create the right boot configuration in Grub4dos!!

Sounds too easy...would have thought Horst would have taken that route if it was that easy??

Reading back on your posts now that I am beginning to understand the process behind it all it looks like you have gained some good experience with this so I am tempted now to try some new approaches from reading your experiences.
I will continue to take my SSD out when I make new installs and write an image of it to another PC in case anything goes badly wrong.

Thanks again for all the insights Thomas, much appreciated.

[seeteeyou]

Honestly I didn't try OS in RAMDisk myself yet, even though I was reading quite a bit about it.

First of all, we could think about the trimming part. Windows Embedded 8 Standard turned out to be a quite different paradigm when compared to other flavors of Windows. We could easily customize what (not) to keep by picking the right modules:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windows-embedde ... ard-8.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... d.81).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... d.81).aspx

Since we're talking about Embedded Core here, it's pretty much the same deal as Server Core of 2012 R2 and obviously NOT as bloated as the plain vanilla Windows 8 etc.

Acquiring a single license seemed to be relatively easy as long as we're doing a search for the right key words on Google:

WE8S-001-RS
7WT-00094-1PK
WINDOWS EMBEDDED STANDARD 8 EMB ESD OEI RUNTIME
http://www.neutronet.com/prod.cfm/1787326
http://www.nextwarehouse.com/item/?1634017
http://www.google.com/shopping/product/ ... 9945561265

Volume licensing / single license:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/ ... _Brief.pdf
http://avnetmssolutions.com/products/15 ... rd+-+WES+8
http://avnetexpress.avnet.com/1/1/11227 ... 4-1pk.html

Embedded flavors in China:

Windows Embedded Standard 7 SP1
Windows Embedded 8.1 Industry Pro
Windows Embedded 8 Standard

Unofficial solutions for trimming the OS:

http://www.ntlite.com
http://www.winreducer.net/software.html
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=25333
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=23553
http://reboot.pro/topic/18467-vhd-w8-co ... ke-mini-8/
http://reboot.pro/files/file/299-vhd-w8 ... ke-mini-8/

Now for loading the (trimmed) VHD image in RAMDisk, it's basically all about Grub4DOS plus either FiraDisk or WinVBlock:


http://youtu.be/Va3PmHZwUtQ
http://tech.outcult.com/tutorials/winram/01/
http://reboot.pro/topic/16646-run-windo ... m-ramdisk/

More on Grub4DOS here:

http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/grub4dos

For the hardware part, Gigabyte and ACARD were making interesting options in the past for converting RAM into SATA drives. Something like that could potentially replace the music disk from PPA. Right now we could keep an eye on another new product from Taiwan:

http://www.all1.com.tw/CDD101cache.html
http://www.all1.com.tw/CDD101Storage%20Turbo.html
http://www.mobile01.com/topicdetail.php?f=490&t=3937501

Given the relatively affordable route to go for the Embedded Core of Windows Embedded 8 Standard, it could be a viable alternative to the somewhat pricey license for 2012 R2 Essentials. In other words, we don't have to pay for those server features when we aren't even using them to begin with.

It's also much easier to decide what components are stripped so that VHD could be trimmed easily. We just have to find out if AO were working for Windows Embedded 8 Standard or otherwise.

What a nice tweak to get RAMDisk working since the costs of SATA SSD + OCXO clock upgrade as well as the SATA cable for OS disk could be allocated for something else.

[Octagon]

Sounds too easy...would have thought Horst would have taken that route if it was that easy

Pearse,
Looking back quite often things seem to be easy, don't they? ;) Honestly, the way getting there was a manually one - allowing later on to search for the right tools.
As far as I understand Horst approach there are two fundamental differences: a) Focus on stripping the OS down allowing the use of 8GB RAM or less; b)OS start is based on USB sticks?

From my perspective the most important thing is, that the result is working pretty well and we managed a major step forward in sq!

You will recognize that backup and testing will be easier as well the moment one has a working system in RAM: Just copy the VHD to have a backup, if you test something with OS in RAM nothing can go wrong as nothing is stored, just reboot ;)

Enjoy
Thomas

[taggart]

Horst (Trinnov) from german AH-Forum has written a guide about RAM-OS.
Ulli (modmix) from the same Forum has completed an english translation some days ago.

Those who are interested can find the translated version here:
http://www.acourate.com/RamWin/WinRAM%2 ... 3_engl.pdf

Christoph

[tony]

Thanks Christoph, Way behind the curve on this but fingers crossed some light reading in the new year will start this new voyage of discovery.

Sorry should also thank Pearse and some of our new members. I wonder should the mods consider an introductory sticky for new members? Some might like to introduce themselves etc.

[Sligolad]

Been playing a bit more with RamDisk and I now have Server 2012 R2 Essentials in Minimal Server with AO 1.26b applied to end up with a RamDisk of 3.9Gb with over 1Gb to spare in there. (did some seat of the pants deleting of files in the OS which I got away with)
It loads great into memory with 12Gb still left to play with.

Been playing with latest versions of MQN and found myself going back to the GK versions of Play but the latest Controls sound good.
JPlay was nowhere near MQN in RamDisk so I went and loaded JPlay 4.3 which was a version before all the Ultrastream and 2PC stuff and finally I heard a sound to challenge MQN in RamDisk.
I have JPlay 4.3 running Directlink and River with Hibernate (the old hibernate where you have to play out the music) working great.

When I start-up RamDisk I am copying files into the root of the C Drive (RamDisk) from my Music SSD using Total Commander which ends up with them actually being loaded into the 12Gb of Ram I still have.
When I copy music files to the C Drive I run the ReWriter tool on them which is quick and then start the usual right clicking and space bar to listen in JPlay.

All sounds very good and soon hope to go back and try MQN again.

Think I will leave it at that for the moment as it is working great and sounding even better.
Been an interesting few days!!!
Cheers, Pearse.