RAMDrive 2.0

RAMDrive is an application that lets you create drives on your RAM memory. RAM stands for Random Access Memory, and it is an important component of every computer. One of its main characteristics is that it is very fast. It is much faster than standard mechanical hard drives, like those installed on most computers. Thus, creating a RAM Drive would allow you to have access to data faster than if it were stored on a regular hard drive. There are, of course, conditions that have to be met for you to gain a speed boost by having a RAM drive. For example, if you use a RAM drive for storage and are constantly sending data from the RAM drive to a mechanical hard drive, then you probably won't see a speed boost, because you are introducing a bottle neck to the system. However, I think that if you use the RAM drive to launch applications or for large files, then you will see a speed gain.

The application is very simple. When you launch it, you will be asked what size you would like for your RAM drive. You can use a drop-down menu to set the size, which will be limited by the amount of memory on your system. In my case, with 8GB installed RAM, the max space I could assign was 7GB, but that would only leave 1GB for my system, which would have ugly consequences for the speed of my Mac. After a drive is created, it will be mounted and you can quit the application. You can set RAMDrive to create the drive again when the system reboots. RAM is volatile, which means that if the system has no power (it's turned off), your drive will be erased. So keep this in mind before storing important information on a RAM drive.