OS in RamDisk

[sima66]

When you say "carefully chosen hardware regarding power consumption etc. has a much bigger impact", do you specific mean regarding to the RAM?
What brand of RAM you find to be the best in your opinion and from your experience?

Hi Adam,
this time maybe my "poor choice of words" ;)
I check the data charts of the possible RAM very carefully. Watch the details and you will recognize that the power consumption varies quite often, depending on the latency timing you want to use. Marketing shows always the lowest power and lowest latency but if you check the details you may recognize that it is the 11-11-11 timing only with 1.5V, with the offered lowest timing of 9-9-9 it says suddenly 1.65V. As we are looking for lowest latency with lowest power to avoid jitter this would not be my choice.
That said, I check the data charts about the signed RAM for the respective mainboard. And yes, that is sometimes a nightmare as you need to understand that you have to watch for the combination you would like to use. There are so many cryptic names from letters and numbers... But finally that leaves you alone with less possibilities and now you can start to check the data charts of each available RAM. ;) And finally cost and availability has a saying as well. At the moment I use KHX16C9T3K2/16X just because of alignment with mainboard and 9-9-9 latency with 1.5V. Normally I would not buy this kind of stuff with heat spreader, but it was the best available choice. I know there is other RAM possible with 1.2V but it needs to fit with your mainboard.
Take care
Thomas

Thanks Thomas,
That's a good tip. I was under the impressions that by lowering the timing, the voltage goes down and not the opposite!
And you are right, usually "the devil is in the small print"!

[nige2000]

I have these
www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B009F6Y9NE

1600 cl9

can clock to 800mhz 5 5 5 9

lowering the frequency keeps the voltage requirements lower

[Octagon]

lowering the frequency keeps the voltage requirements lower

Hi Nige,
Agreed, in this case we talk about lowering the frequency of RAM in BIOS, right?
I understood Adams question about how to chose RAM hardware. There are quite some RAMs out there with basic data saying it needs higher voltage with lowering latency. Might be you could tweaking these pieces to lower voltage in BIOS as well.
My 2 Cents
Thomas

[nige2000]

bios ram voltage is a bit like sugar
flavour to taste
usually for me around 1.3v
the sticks I mentioned above go much lower but it sounds really thin

[tony]

I recoded paste.exe with C++ and I don't need .Net anymore.
Using MQnLoad as suggested by Octagon would be an alternative but I'm using Foobar as GUI and prefer to keep it like that.

Adolfo

Had a go this evening with this. Not sure what I did or sequence but your paste.exe and running the C++ program has got ramdisk working for me.
Will need to get Pearse to verify which version of the VHD I am running. Many thanks again Aldolfo.
Very crystal clear,bright detailed and tight bass. Would love to hear the opinion of the nos dac has treble roll off brigade if they heard it.

[nige2000]

gotta try this soon
is there an updated tutorial anywhere?

[tony]

Will photocopy Pearse's instructions and send them down to you. They should get someone like you to end game. I know Pearse was making some changes during my install but they were minor. On hindsight I think the modified paste.exe from Adolfo is probably what has it working for me. i think the C++ files were installed already.

[Octagon]

gotta try this soon
is there an updated tutorial anywhere?

Hi Nige,
let me know if I can help anywhere in the process. You might take a look at the beginning of the thread where I mentioned some tools. Most difficulties are based on the stripping of OS, with 16GB RAM available you can avoid all of that.
Take care
Thomas

[nige2000]

Is there any drives connected usb or sata when booting into win ram

say I have a vhd on a usb key
can I install the firadisk driver on it?

what happens after the firadisk driver is installed does it just show up as a boot method on the bootloader and just load the os from the usb key onto the ram?

apologies for stupid questions
I've not kept upto date

[Octagon]

Hi Nige,
there are no stupid question ;)

Is there any drives connected usb or sata when booting into win ram

Yes, you need one drive with a system where the VHD is located.
In my case this is an SSD with one partition and R2 2012 installation. This installation contains all tools I use to update the windows bootmanager (with Easy BCD) and/or the Grub4Dos bootmanager (with manually editing).
Once booted into RAM you can swith this SSD off if you like.

say I have a vhd on a usb key
can I install the firadisk driver on it?

I can't judge on the USB key approach. But it looks like it adds additional hurdles with it, based on the individual system. My suggestion would be to install in a first step a working RAMBoot system from a normal drive. You know that Microsoft has a lot of restriction build around starting from USB Keys. And this has been growing with UEFI Bios a lot without giving you any feedback why things are not working, even more as every bios is different.

You need to install the firadisk driver to the VHD you want to boot into RAM. Before you can boot your VHD into RAM for the first time you need to switch "Testsigning" on in the OS of the VHD. Therefore you have to boot the VHD once as a VHD. To boot it, add it with BCDEasy to your bootmanager:
Restart the system, choose the VHD and you get an error message because the Firadisk driver is not MS certified.
Go again to the bootmanager, highlight the VHD again and push F8. In the menue choose "disable driver signature enforcement". The OS will start from VHD.
Now open a cmd window and enter "bcdedit -set Testsigning on". The task should be confirmed. From now you will be able to start this VHD from bootmanager without problems and you can boot it from Grub4Dos as well.

what happens after the firadisk driver is installed does it just show up as a boot method on the bootloader and just load the os from the usb key onto the ram?

Again, I can't judge on the USB key approach. But the answer to your question is no. Like with the VHD you need to add it to the bootmanager which is for booting into RAM Grub4Dos. If you have Grub4Dos installed on and via your basic OS on the original harddisk you should find there a folder "Boot_BCD". Search for the file "menu.lst". This file contains the Grub4Dos Bootmanager content and you can edit it accordingly.

If you have done that right, you reboot:
Bootmanager should have an entry "Grub4Dos bootmanager"; start it
A very coloured window opens with the Grub4Dos bootmanager which should show you the name you set for the VHD in the menu.lst as an entry:
Go to that entry and start it.
The RAM will now be checked and counted. The reason for that is, that the ram needs to have the storage bits in a row over the whole size of the VHD. If that is the case, which it is if you have enough RAM in the system:
Your OS will start in RAM :)))

Nige, there are a lot of details missing, as mentioned take a look at the first page of this thread for more details on the tools. From my experience the biggest hurdle is to install Grub4Dos for amateurs like me. I am still searching for an easy explanation. I know that BCDEasy offers that as well but could not that test that. You might give it a try and I would be keen to hear about ypour experience.

Let me know in case you are stuck somewhere, we will find a way.

I keep my fingers crossed ;)
Thomas