Installing Windows XP on the RAM?

[matthewvandenham]

Hi, I've recently tried out a distribution of linux called puppy or dingo 4.0 and I'm really impressed at how the 87mb OS boots from the CD and loads itself on to the RAM. and once you shut down you can burn your preferences a cdr, or copy to usb drive, and of course your hard drive.

Now this got me thinking, Can I achieve this type of configuration with Windows XP?

I want windows XP to boot from the CD or DVD, copy itself and all of the applications I would need on to the RAM. I think I could achieve this with my 2GB RAM...I might consider adding more if it is required.

The reason I am trying to have a ram based system is because I am trying to eliminate the excess noise from my PC and also I want the fast disk read/write access that is required for sound recording. I do not require anything else aside from Cubase and my sound, video and any other required drivers, I don't even require the windows GUI, it would be great if my computer just loaded cubase and that's it. I would not be using this machine for internet access or anything else other than sound recording/editing.

Any ideas? How can I configure windows xp to boot from a CD and then once loaded it is running of the RAM? This is a rather technical computer question, but if you have any ideas, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks + Cheers!

[tribeofenki]

There's some Win tweaked with nLite and vLite.

Tried by myself in the past: unreliable.

[matthewvandenham]

the dreaded hard drive tick combined with the progress bar is enough to drive a man insane....

Right, well my gut tells me this might be unreliable because of the possiblity of rebooting/updating etc, but I still think it can be configured so that loosing power is not an issue at all. Such as power supply backups...But If it Booted as fast as puppy then it wouldn't really matter if you needed to reboot because the only thing that matters is that you've transfered that .wav file to your usb stick.

Can you imagine creating an XP based system running FAT16 on the RAM?? The responsiveness would be just about instantaneous once fully loaded and it would perform very quietly. I want to configure an XP installation so that instead of loading explorer.exe it loads cubase.exe. I would like to remove my hard drive and use USB sticks to store the .wav files to. This machine would be strictly designed for audio recording (not vst or mastering), so that recording a multi-track instrument like drums would record beautifully. I could take such a configuration and install it on a low end system and it would still perform smoothly. even old DDR RAM is still so much faster than the fastest hard drive you can buy, makes me want to take advantage of this speed/stability and noise reduction.

[aussie_techie]

running windows on a ramdisk isn't really feasible but you could use a solid state disk or an open flash module if you could mount it. there is a stripped down version of windows that loads a program that will record a multi-track in cubse's muti-track format, i cant remember what its called though.

a write biased SSD should be solid enough for audio as well

[cdog]

"Can I achieve this type of configuration with Windows XP?"

No. You can buy a Solid State hard drive and XP will load faster.

[NobleWordz]

Originally Posted by i604

There's some Win tweaked with nLite and vLite.

Tried by myself in the past: unreliable.

Perfectly reliable for me.

[andyspiller]

I am hoping this
HyperOs Systems
is going to work - my Dad is test driving it soon

I'll let you know if it's successful

[jeremynothman]

There's some talk of this over on the DUC in the i7 build thread - one guy even makes suggestions of software to use for creating the RAMdisks.

That said you still need a hard-drive for the audio, USB is slow/unreliable.

[aussie_techie]

but you need to run the software every time you boot so its more to load and in most cases that extra OS and software will still be on a hard disk.

but there's no need for USB, SATA and SAS flash drives will look like any other drive to most OS's. although capacity will be one factor to consider.

[space2012]

Originally Posted by matthewvandenham

Now this got me thinking, Can I achieve this type of configuration with Windows XP?

I want windows XP to boot from the CD or DVD, copy itself and all of the applications I would need on to the RAM. I think I could achieve this with my 2GB RAM...I might consider adding more if it is required.

Any ideas?

you are crazy,
windows XP sp2 needs minium 2GB uncompressed space to be installed.
also needs 1.5GB of page file "Virtual Memory", unless you disable the page file, and install 4GB of RAM.
4GB is the maxium RAM allowed by any 32-Bit OS.

also you need to buy a UPS with less than 5% distortion, and buy lots of additional memory packs.

if light goes away in the middle of a session, you will have to install again the Windows XP.
you need to buy an UPS.

it takes 2hours to install Windows XP alone, add more to Drivers and audio software, with plugins and stuff.

and you should never turn off the PC.
??????
OR....
the only way to have more speed in windows xp sp2 is...
to Buy 4x 32GB Intel X25-Exterme HDD, at near $500usd each.

get a decent motherboard with Intel ICH10r southbridge chip, or a fast boot dedicated SATA RAID card, that allows to boot. MOST PCIe to SATA RAID CARDS DONT ALLOW TO BOOT. BEWARE.

use your bios to create an stripped RAid not Mirrored.
Stripped RAID
FAST.
Mirrored RAID = Secure.
RAID 10 = FAST & SECURE.

that will give 0.1ms access times, and >500Mb/s of Read&Write speed.
measured with HDTach3.0.4 from Simply Software.

thats the fastest, you can get. with 4x drives, and wont have to re-install everything, buy UPS.

you can add more drives to RAID, but you also need a large 2TB HDD from WesternDigital, or a 1.5TB from Seagate, for file storage.

[matthewvandenham]

Originally Posted by space2012

you are crazy,
windows XP sp2 needs minium 2GB uncompressed space to be installed.
also needs 1.5GB of page file "Virtual Memory", unless you disable the page file, and install 4GB of RAM.
4GB is the maxium RAM allowed by any 32-Bit OS.

also you need to buy a UPS with less than 5% distortion, and buy lots of additional memory packs.

if light goes away in the middle of a session, you will have to install again the Windows XP.
you need to buy an UPS.

it takes 2hours to install Windows XP alone, add more to Drivers and audio software, with plugins and stuff.

and you should never turn off the PC.
??????
OR....
the only way to have more speed in windows xp sp2 is...
to Buy 4x 32GB Intel X25-Exterme HDD, at near $500usd each.

get a decent motherboard with Intel ICH10r southbridge chip, or a fast boot dedicated SATA RAID card, that allows to boot. MOST PCIe to SATA RAID CARDS DONT ALLOW TO BOOT. BEWARE.

use your bios to create an stripped RAid not Mirrored.
Stripped RAID
FAST.
Mirrored RAID = Secure.
RAID 10 = FAST & SECURE.

that will give 0.1ms access times, and >500Mb/s of Read&Write speed.
measured with HDTach3.0.4 from Simply Software.

thats the fastest, you can get. with 4x drives, and wont have to re-install everything, buy UPS.

you can add more drives to RAID, but you also need a large 2TB HDD from WesternDigital, or a 1.5TB from Seagate, for file storage.

Ok thanks for the reply. I just want to point out that there are USB stick versions of XP which are around 50-60mb's in size. I haven't been successful booting a USB version, but I do use a 345mb slimmed down version of XP SP3. so if you have 1+GB of RAM, that's really not that bad. And I could probably slim it down another 50mb if I rooted out some fonts, sounds, and other stuff that is considered non-essential.

The problem with this question I've posed is the reboot factor. You need to be able to Boot in to xp so it can detect the drivers. I wonder if you had an xp/ntfs/fat compatible boot disk and then created a macro in the autoexec.bat file so that it created and copied all the uncompressed to your ram disk and then booted and stayed booted. It will probably take a few installations to get your configuration perfect but once you got it, it'll just rip up your applications. I would also remove the 'shut down, restart' feature and only use hibernate at all times when not in use. Anyway, I'm still working on a solution but I think it can be done.

A potential work-around for this idea is to boot xp from a cd/dvd and have it copy the most of the files that are commonly used to the ramdisk.

[jcschild]

i have to agree that this is a pointless idea.
ram cant save anything once you power down its gone.
even the 8x speed usb sticks are slow
and whats the point to this anyway faster boot times?

buy an SSD.

funny i really dont ever recall saying man this system needs to boot faster..
of course i rarely reboot and never shut down.

and the hacked "lite" ver of windows is also rather pointless.

Scott
ADK

[space2012]

alternative... you can: install WinXP in SSD, or similar,
250MB/s or more...
then use any software like RAMDISK,
and install your applications there, and make backups.
with DDR3 has 5000MB/s

[matthewvandenham]

Originally Posted by jcschild

i have to agree that this is a pointless idea.
ram cant save anything once you power down its gone.
even the 8x speed usb sticks are slow
and whats the point to this anyway faster boot times?

buy an SSD.

funny i really dont ever recall saying man this system needs to boot faster..
of course i rarely reboot and never shut down.

and the hacked "lite" ver of windows is also rather pointless.

Scott
ADK

you don't see the point? download puppy linux and watch how a RAM based OS performs compared to a conventional HD. It's a cheap work-around for performance on an older system...and no, the benefit, boot-times wouldn't make sense, you could only boot it once in to XP for the ramdisk to function. I would be using the ram disk to improve application performance of course. so have you even tried the light version of xp that I'm talking about? it's about 350mb's smaller in installation size and it's tweaked to the max.... honestly, you're not helping my sale with adk by shunning my thread, I appreciate honest answers but I'm not a dumb noob ...and yes I know SSD, acard and iram is available but it's still to be determined which to go with and also the price the drop... I posted a thread a few weeks ago with a some of the videos space2012 has posted.

Basically to be able to pull off the ram disk based OS, you'd need a sort of battery backup system like the iram or acard.


Windows XP Performance Edition SP3 - March 2009 (download torrent) - TPB
look at the details...and you probably already know but you can also build your own with barpe or nlite...but ya, I like the version this guy compiled...it's very concise and he removed all the ad-crap from the installation.

[jcschild]

HI Matt,

honestly, you're not helping my sale with adk by shunning my thread

something you need to learn about me, i am brutally honest in these forums.
its not about the sale (like a few have accused me of)
i enjoy the discussion/debate and have to chase mis-information as much as possible.

buying from me or not does not change how i post.

yes i have tried the "lite" versions of windows and again its pointless.
back with win 98 it did have some merits.

loading an OS in to ram is pointless.
linux for audio is pointless (amlost nothing works)

for a REAL pro audio set up none of this makes a hill of beans difference.
is acomplishes nothing nor helps the end goal.
a stable powerful quick DAW.

all of these way out there tweaker type stuff used to have some merit when the os was buggy and our systems were slow.

fast forward to today. our systems are more powerful than the software can use
(64 bit) and the available OS's OSX or XP/Vista are prefectly stable with some (a few) tweaks.

we used to do over 100 tweaks yrs ago to windows. now we are down to i think 30 or so. and really only about 10 are important.

so please tell me why you think you need to load an OS to ram?

will it give me more tracks @ 96K
more samples ability?
more overall system stability?

if none of these then it does nothing for pro audio...

Scott
ADK

[matthewvandenham]

well you can still be honest without sounding so condescending...

No, it wouldn't give you none of what you've mentioned but it will drastically speed up the responsiveness for things normally stored/accessed from your hard drive. the benefits seem pretty obvious to me... And from a studio/AE perspective, you'd be lessening the general noise created by the tick of a hard drive r/w. I recommend you test-out a ram based os by some linux distro and watch and *listen how it loads apps, even under heavy loads. it's just a comparison, I have no intentions of using linux box anytime soon as my primary daw because of the shyte drivers (lthough, I've read that RME has good drivers for linux... ), but because the utilize the ram disk and also it doesn't suffer from disk fragmentation, so it really burns up any app. you can throw at it. When I was first starting out with computers I had an abundance of ram but I only had a 20mb hard drive that barely worked, so I created a ram disk for 3.1 to run off of and it was hilariously fast. it's tougher to do with xp, but I'm going to find a way soon...

[sleeper1400]

yo.

there are some homebrew apps that make XPlite but im not sure if they install on the ram.

sseems kind of a waste of time.

no offense of course.

maybe you should think about an isobox for the computer?
(if its a tower)

IsoBox Sound Proof Boxes from Custom Consoles

[christopherw]

Originally Posted by matthewvandenham

the dreaded hard drive tick combined with the progress bar is enough to drive a man insane....

Right, well my gut tells me this might be unreliable because of the possiblity of rebooting/updating etc, but I still think it can be configured so that loosing power is not an issue at all. Such as power supply backups...But If it Booted as fast as puppy then it wouldn't really matter if you needed to reboot because the only thing that matters is that you've transfered that .wav file to your usb stick.

Can you imagine creating an XP based system running FAT16 on the RAM?? The responsiveness would be just about instantaneous once fully loaded and it would perform very quietly. I want to configure an XP installation so that instead of loading explorer.exe it loads cubase.exe. I would like to remove my hard drive and use USB sticks to store the .wav files to. This machine would be strictly designed for audio recording (not vst or mastering), so that recording a multi-track instrument like drums would record beautifully. I could take such a configuration and install it on a low end system and it would still perform smoothly. even old DDR RAM is still so much faster than the fastest hard drive you can buy, makes me want to take advantage of this speed/stability and noise reduction.

Things to bear in mind:

1) the duty cycle of most consumer USB sticks isn't rated for hundreds of hours of continuous read/write access. You might find that they either disappear from the system without warning, gradually slow down after a while of use... Or even begin to corrupt! I would only consider using SSDs for no-moving-parts storage.


2) You're going to need one hell of a UPS if you're running a RAM-based system!

3) USB doesn't have a great burst-rate throughput... Ten channels can overwhelm it if you're not careful. But then, I managed to overwhelm Logic (and the internal SATA drive of a MBP) with 10 channels of 16/44.1 audio through an 1814 a couple of weeks ago, so anything's possible.


4) Why not just get some Raptors and RAID them? Or hell, you don't even need 10,000rpm drives. Why not just buy some E-SATA drives (or even just buy five 7200rpm Barracudas and set them up in a carefully chosen RAID array?)

[matthewvandenham]

Originally Posted by christopherw

Things to bear in mind:

1) the duty cycle of most consumer USB sticks isn't rated for hundreds of hours of continuous read/write access. You might find that they either disappear from the system without warning, gradually slow down after a while of use... Or even begin to corrupt! I would only consider using SSDs for no-moving-parts storage.


2) You're going to need one hell of a UPS if you're running a RAM-based system!

3) USB doesn't have a great burst-rate throughput... Ten channels can overwhelm it if you're not careful. But then, I managed to overwhelm Logic (and the internal SATA drive of a MBP) with 10 channels of 16/44.1 audio through an 1814 a couple of weeks ago, so anything's possible.


4) Why not just get some Raptors and RAID them? Or hell, you don't even need 10,000rpm drives. Why not just buy some E-SATA drives (or even just buy five 7200rpm Barracudas and set them up in a carefully chosen RAID array?)

you're right I could just buy a newer HD but that would be 'cheating' ;-) ... that would definitely help improve the performance but I started the thread in hopes of learning something new about configuring PC's and possibly saving money on upgrading...

I've tried booting with my usb stick but I couldn't get it to work or I might have just gotten impatient and rebooting from the lack of responsiveness. That's not what I'm trying to achieve at all...


Anyway, I'm going to keep plugging away at it...thanks for your suggestions and comments!

[jcschild]

you're right I could just buy a newer HD but that would be 'cheating' ;-) ... that would definitely help improve the performance but I started the thread in hopes of learning something new about configuring PC's and possibly saving money on upgrading...

well now we are getting to the bottom of this.

most people would call that smart not cheating, but if you have more time than the $60 for a new HDD, $150 for a raptor or $300 for an SSD
then yeah have fun.

i thought you were trying to say it would improve performance for some reason.

Scott
ADK

[matthewvandenham]

Originally Posted by jcschild

well now we are getting to the bottom of this.

most people would call that smart not cheating, but if you have more time than the $60 for a new HDD, $150 for a raptor or $300 for an SSD
then yeah have fun.

i thought you were trying to say it would improve performance for some reason.

Scott
ADK

yeah, in theory running XP off of the ram would drastically improve your performance with HD access...but you're right, it's not necessarily the most practical solution for enhancing performance.. but anyway, I own an older system with an abundance of compatible ram kickin' around, so I figured I'd give it a shot. when you're a broke-ass like me you have to think of free work-arounds and alternatives to improve you performance. I'm curious as to why you don't think XP tweaks are helpful but 98se tweaks are? my girlfriend has an older laptop with 512mb ram and a 1.4ghz celeron with xp home and all kinds of pre installed crap...I wiped it clean, update the bios firmware and downloaded the latest drivers and install the performance edition of windows xp pro x86, and the difference in performance/efficiency is really quite drastic... I really like this version of xp because the iso is only 176mb in size once extracted (only 158mb to download!) and it allows you to build-up from that point and install the updates and software you choose. I use the MS serial key changer tool so I can enter my legitimate serial that I've purchased. seriously, the stock version of xp sp3 pro is a lot heavier on the resources and the tweaks make a big difference! give it a shot, it only takes around 15 minutes to fully install, and the installation is MS crap-free! best version of xp pro x86 ever... btw there's a 64-bit kicking around somewhere...

[hugol]

Matthew - I've got to agree with the others, it's a really odd thing you're trying to do and a bit confused I fear. Just forget about the RAM disk idea - it's pointless and wouldn't do what you want. You simply haven't got the memory for a start and you can't compare an incredibly stripped down Linux edition with XP.

The USB (or CD) versions of Linux use a very small RAM disk out of necessity because writing back to the USB drive would be too slow (or impossible with CD). It might make it fast, but they are incredibly cut down editions. Besides have you tried Puppy off a hard disk - I think you'll find it's incredibly fast there as well.

As for the optimised versions of XP - well they certainly boot faster, that's for sure, but as for faster in-use performance - possibly but it will only be marginal. All the background stuff on a modern PC doesn't usually even take up 1% of most CPUs after all. All you've really done is free some memory and reduce loading times (by not starting as much and by deleting some frameworks). If it works for you then great, but things like Windows update are likely to break completely and you may well have a nightmare installing new devices or software. But if you can put up with the potential pain this option is infinitely more feasible and realistic than your RAM disk idea.

If you want XP to run well then turn off themes, use a good defrag tool like PerfectDisk and use msconfig to turn off unnecessary startup programs. Also for the hell of it run CCleaner every so often.

[matthewvandenham]

Originally Posted by HugoL

Matthew - I've got to agree with the others, it's a really odd thing you're trying to do and a bit confused I fear. Just forget about the RAM disk idea - it's pointless and wouldn't do what you want. You simply haven't got the memory for a start and you can't compare an incredibly stripped down Linux edition with XP.

The USB (or CD) versions of Linux use a very small RAM disk out of necessity because writing back to the USB drive would be too slow (or impossible with CD). It might make it fast, but they are incredibly cut down editions. Besides have you tried Puppy off a hard disk - I think you'll find it's incredibly fast there as well.

As for the optimised versions of XP - well they certainly boot faster, that's for sure, but as for faster in-use performance - possibly but it will only be marginal. All the background stuff on a modern PC doesn't usually even take up 1% of most CPUs after all. All you've really done is free some memory and reduce loading times (by not starting as much and by deleting some frameworks). If it works for you then great, but things like Windows update are likely to break completely and you may well have a nightmare installing new devices or software. But if you can put up with the potential pain this option is infinitely more feasible and realistic than your RAM disk idea.

If you want XP to run well then turn off themes, use a good defrag tool like PerfectDisk and use msconfig to turn off unnecessary startup programs. Also for the hell of it run CCleaner every so often.

yeah, it sort of odd I agree...but I've always wondered why OS manufacturers haven't built a hardware based OS's? like flashable chipsets or ram based with a battery back up... hard drives should be used for storing information that isn't frequently accessed. I've never really liked the architechture of windows because of how it accessess the hard drive all the time and disk fragmentation etc...

hugel/scott: please examine closely what the author has done to optimize windows...it's not just like tweakui or a registry cleaner for example, it's a totally different version of windows in my eyes. runs like 98se in terms of 'snappiness'... boots fast, loads apps fast, switches fast. but of course xp pro stability and newer drivers etc.


"Original Size: 595 mb
New Size: 176 mb (Difference of 419 mb)
(This is the Size of the ISO)

This is the English Only Edition.

This is a FULL Install. You CANNOT Upgrade from previous versions of Windows.
There is no validation required. This PASSES WGA.
I have included the CD-Key already in the install process. This means at no point will you have to enter it.
This has all windows updates through September 2008. This is has been tested in VMWare Numerous times with no errors.
This works 100% with Windows Update.

The Following has been Removed From This OS...

Applications:
Briefcase
ClipBook Viewer
Games
Internet Games
Pinball
Screensavers

Drivers:
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)
Cameras and Camcorders
Display Adapters
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IBM PS/2 TrackPoint
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ISDN
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Modems
Multifunctional
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Tape drives
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Hardware Support:
Brother Devices
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Multimedia:
AOL ART Image Format Support
Images and Backgrounds
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Old CDPlayer and Sound Recorder
Speech Support
Tablet PC
Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player 6.4

Network:
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Connection Manager
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H323 MSP
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IP Conferencing
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Web Folders
Windows Messenger

Operating System Options:
NET Framework
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Desktop Cleanup Wizard
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DR Watson
Extra Fonts
FAT to NTFS converter
File and Settings Wizard
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Private Character Editor
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Tour

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Directories:
DOCS
SUPPORT
VALUEADD

I have disabled and deleted the Classic Windows XP Install Screens with the info about XP and the blue Background.
You will just see a black background now and the install will look similar to 2000. This saves Space and gives more
info while installing.

The Minimum HD and RAM Requirements have been lifted. You can try and install this on whatever machine you like now.
High ISO Compression has been enabled to save space.

Patches:
TCP/IP Half-Open Connections = 100 (Default 10)
UXTheme Patch (Allows Unsigned Themes to be applied to XP)
Windows System File Checker Disabled (SFC)

Tweaks:
Boot and Shutdown-Auto-End tasks immediately
Boot and Shutdown-Auto-Kill hung applications immediately
Boot and Shutdown-Auto-Kill hung services immediately
Boot and Shutdown-Ctrl-Alt-Del at logon-Disabled
Boot and Shutdown-Logon Page-Classic
Boot and Shutdown-Setup Prefetch-Cache-Disabled
Boot and Shutdown-Status Messages-Extended
Desktop-Desktop icons size-32
Desktop-Internet Explorer icon-Show
Desktop-My Computer icon-Show
Desktop-My Documents icon-Show
Desktop-My Network Places icon-Hide
Desktop-Recycle Bin icon-Show
Explorer-Add 'Command Prompt' to folder context menu
Explorer-Advanced Search: preconfigure options
Explorer-Associate additional file types with Notepad
Explorer-Change Windows Explorer folder view-List
Explorer-Classic Control Panel
Explorer-Disable Prefix: Shortcut to
Explorer-Disable shortcut arrow
Explorer-Disable Web Files and Folders connection
Explorer-Display the contents of system folders
Explorer-Launch folder windows in a separate process
Explorer-Remove Send To on context menu
Explorer-Show Drive Letters in front of Drive Names
Explorer-Show extensions of known file-types
Explorer-Show hidden files and folders
Explorer-Show Map Network Drives buttons in Explorer bar
Explorer-Show protected operating system files
Explorer-Show Statusbar in all windows
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Explorer-Use small icons in Explorer bar
Internet Explorer-Disable information bar when popup is blocked
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Privacy-Disable Driver Update Internet prompt
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Start Menu-Control Panel-Display as a menu
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Start Menu-My Computer-Display as a menu
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Start Menu-My Network Places-Don't display this item
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Start Menu-Network Connections-Display as Connect to menu
Start Menu-Reduce popup delay
Start Menu-Remove Pinned Apps List from Start Panel
Start Menu-Remove Search For People from Search
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Start Menu-Remove Set Program Access and Defaults
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Start Menu-Scroll Programs
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Taskbar-Disable Balloon Tips
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Taskbar-Lock the Taskbar-Yes
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Additional Features:
VLK Serial Number
Firewall Disabled
System Restore Service Disabled
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I was really impressed with the installation... it's just a progress bar showing the files being copied and it did it very quickly (10minutes). After the installation I changed my serial then ran the ms updates, ie8, and everything except family filter for msn because it adds a lot of under-the-hood stuff that helps improve windows in general. i.e. silverlight, .net, etc. i use the media center theme to keep the gui looking nice... here's a comparison to show how software configuration can make a huge difference... My roomates laptop is far more powerful machine. It's a 64 bit dual core 2.5ghz, 2gb ram toshiba satellite w/ vista and plenty of taskbar startup items. I have a 1gb 2.4ghz p4 compaq and my computer tears hers up. my point is if your pc's hardware is running on lighter loads at all times, it can breath a lot easier. I mean, her computer would burn up my pc on a benchmark, but I just mean in terms of accessing my files (because i use jkdefrag a lot), starting up apps, multitasking is more solid, and it's just doesn't 'bog' like her laptop does bettween app./tab switching... These are 'environmental' tweaks, that help speed up your general efficiency when using a pc. of course nothing compares to replacing your old h/w with more powerful hardware, but like I said if your pc isn't properly configured for performance/efficiency, you'll be waiting for it to catch up to you ...

As for the ram drive, I'm starting to agree more with you all that it isn't really a practical solution given the volatile nature. I could buy a battery backup and blah blah..but the new ssd drives are on the way so I'll just wait for them to stabilize.... I still don't really understand why OS manufacturers don't use mother board integrated hardware to run the OS(?).

[matthewvandenham]

and yes I have installed puppy on a hard drive and it runs even better actually....it's really an amazing piece of software... the author should get recognition for making such a solid and efficient version of linux that is truly easy to configure and start using almost immedietly. it's great to use as a recovery tool for example because it can access your ntfs/fat drives and also very useful as a webmachine on an older computer or laptop. only 97mb!

[hugol]

Hi Matthew- yes you are are right - we played with one of these cut down Windows installs at my previous work because we wanted very small footprint XP installs to run in virtual machines for development purposes.

I agree they are snappier, but it's almost all due to memory footprint and loading times. What I meant by performance difference is it's highly unlikely you'll suddenly find you can get a load of extra plug-ins running within your DAW, maybe an extra one, but nothing significant.

If you look at the changes most of them are deleting low interest files - which has no affect aside from install speed and disk space. A few services and frameworks have been disabled which will speed up boot and load times and save probably 0.5% CPU. There will no doubt be some disk write improvements as well disabling some of these things - no logging from the services or change tracking (system restore) for example.

A few other changes to make things feel more responsive to the user and some fairly standard stuff such as disabling last access times update - this will slightly improve file load performance. I guess overall a bunch of very minor changes that add up to something a bit more noticeable. Apple are doing something similar in some of their changes for Snow Leopard, for example by stripping out unneeded nationalisation files from all programs.

Actually I think you were kind of on the right track in that the affect of these changes isn't really about saving CPU (only a few cycles) but predominately about disk I/O (and memory = disk I/O for swap) which was your premise for the RAM disk. It's just those of us with less time on our hands would prefer to buy fast disks or an SSD and get the same affect as this without the support hassle or risk of breaking things.

[matthewvandenham]

dfegad macs are over-priced and limited in compatibility. alienware, adk & dell xps 730x are way more bang for you buck! I'm just comparing brand name companies, but I'll probably end-up building my own tower from the ground up and saving a lot more there as well... another limitation when you purchase a mac. I could never justify spending that kind of money on a computer when a PC is so much better for customizing... I think if mac released a version of their OS for PC I might consider looking in to it, or if there machines were more competitively priced. XP supports the best software... not sure why any slut would buy in to such a machine. (sidenote: Mac vs PC's...why not?) just started.