Comments on: Running your build/source code from a ram disk. http://lostechies.com/erichexter/2008/07/21/running-your-build-source-code-from-a-ram-disk/ Thu, 23 May 2013 18:10:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 By: Michael Hanney http://lostechies.com/erichexter/2008/07/21/running-your-build-source-code-from-a-ram-disk/#comment-17 Michael Hanney Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:30:46 +0000 /blogs/hex/archive/2008/07/21/running-your-build-source-code-from-a-ram-disk.aspx#comment-17 Eric, are you using a RAM drive *because* you are compiling in a virtual machine, and maybe disk access is slower, or are you using a virtual machine as a temporary/experimental place to try new ideas? Interesting stats. Thanks. Eric, are you using a RAM drive *because* you are compiling in a virtual machine, and maybe disk access is slower, or are you using a virtual machine as a temporary/experimental place to try new ideas? Interesting stats. Thanks.

]]> By: Christopher Painter http://lostechies.com/erichexter/2008/07/21/running-your-build-source-code-from-a-ram-disk/#comment-16 Christopher Painter Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:56:32 +0000 /blogs/hex/archive/2008/07/21/running-your-build-source-code-from-a-ram-disk.aspx#comment-16 YMMV so give it a try, but in general Windows disk caching is very good and ram disks don't normally yield that much of an increase. In fact, allocating too much memory to a ramdisk can actually slow a machine down by robbig the OS of resources that would otherwise be given up to caching. This is coming from a guy that always had a RAM: on his Amiga. :-) Also years ago on NT 4.0 I was doing PowerBuilder builds and I used a program from Cenatek called RamDiskNT that dropped my full bootstrap import and regen time from 1:45 to :25 (minutes). Moving to Windows 2000 and I was able to get the same performance without a ram drive. YMMV so give it a try, but in general Windows disk caching is very good and ram disks don’t normally yield that much of an increase. In fact, allocating too much memory to a ramdisk can actually slow a machine down by robbig the OS of resources that would otherwise be given up to caching.

This is coming from a guy that always had a RAM: on his Amiga. :-) Also years ago on NT 4.0 I was doing PowerBuilder builds and I used a program from Cenatek called RamDiskNT that dropped my full bootstrap import and regen time from 1:45 to :25 (minutes). Moving to Windows 2000 and I was able to get the same performance without a ram drive.

]]> By: Jeremy Gray http://lostechies.com/erichexter/2008/07/21/running-your-build-source-code-from-a-ram-disk/#comment-15 Jeremy Gray Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:35:48 +0000 /blogs/hex/archive/2008/07/21/running-your-build-source-code-from-a-ram-disk.aspx#comment-15 The workstation provided by my current client is hamstrung by the corporate virus scanner and its configuration, so I have upgraded the RAM and am doing daily development with the entire codebase loaded into a rather large RAM disk, though one that automatically flushes back to disk at a configurable interval of time. The difference in overall development experience is staggering. Your post is a timely one because I am very soon going to do the same thing to our build server, which is similarly impacted by virus-scanner-related disk access overhead, and while the RAM disk doesn't negate the on-demand scanning, it at least makes it somewhat less painful. The workstation provided by my current client is hamstrung by the corporate virus scanner and its configuration, so I have upgraded the RAM and am doing daily development with the entire codebase loaded into a rather large RAM disk, though one that automatically flushes back to disk at a configurable interval of time. The difference in overall development experience is staggering.

Your post is a timely one because I am very soon going to do the same thing to our build server, which is similarly impacted by virus-scanner-related disk access overhead, and while the RAM disk doesn’t negate the on-demand scanning, it at least makes it somewhat less painful.

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