Guide | How To Speed up Chrome & Firefox by using a RAM disk

[Evjl's Rain]

Thanks!
I might try having a ram drive later.
I was just curious, since if I remember correctly, people from different sites and forums have discouraged using a ram disk even for browsers because they said that browsers have already been developed to be intelligent in managing RAM (and disk cache), making RAM disks useless.

yes it might be correct but I still see a significant increase in my browsing speed
according to my test, if I didn't use ram drive, my HDD usage if I opened 20 tabs at the same time was 99% but with ramdrive it was just 10%
because most people are using pagefile/virtual memory and can can see browsing also increases pagefile activity regardless of ram size + HDD cache => high disk usage
I disabled pagefile + have ramdrive => extremely low disk usage
I really care about my HDD lifespan as I always saw my friends bringing their laptops to me with dead HDDs (6 times so far)

browsers are smarter and it's good but the advantages of using a ramdrive is always there

 

[SHvFl]

yes it might be correct but I still see a significant increase in my browsing speed
according to my test, if I didn't use ram drive, my HDD usage if I opened 20 tabs at the same time was 99% but with ramdrive it was just 10%
because most people are using pagefile/virtual memory and can can see browsing also increases pagefile activity regardless of ram size + HDD cache => high disk usage
I disabled pagefile + have ramdrive => extremely low disk usage
I really care about my HDD lifespan as I always saw my friends bringing their laptops to me with dead HDDs (6 times so far)

browsers are smarter and it's good but the advantages of using a ramdrive is always there

It's because of images in cache. Disable images to the whole browser and test. It will have minimal change in speed when using a ramdisk even if you have an hdd.

 

[Duotone]

The gain is minimal even on an HDD... but I still use one as SBIE container.

 

[jamescv7]

I think the concern is not on RAM but you need a tool that likely control the responsiveness against CPU eaters.

CPU usage holds the majority of functions on operation especially in the responsiveness.

 

[Paul123]

I thought Firefox (like Waterfox which I use) has a setting to cache to RAM anyway in the settings. I seem to remember typing about:config as the url and then setting browser.cache.disk.enable to false, and browser.cache.memory.enable to true, and browser.cache.memory.capacity to -1 (to make it dynamic). Its a while since I did it so I could be wrong.

 

[giulia]

hi
i would like to do it with sierra osx ,but i don't know to do it , move firefox and chrome cache

under windows ,i have found a big improvement,just because it's very slow to move the ram cache to the image file , and close windows

 

[Serious Noize]

I wanted to ask if there is a command line option for Chrome to where you can make the amount of Ram Chrome uses in the Ram Disk to clear itself out when it runs out of space. Not sure if I explained that right.

Example, you have Chromes cache running in a 1GB Ramdisk, it works great, with one exception, if you start to watch a streaming movie or something that eventually fills up the cache and you have the Cache set to 1GB, once the cache fills up it stops streaming until you manually clear the cache. I could increase the size of the Ramdisk, I have the memory to do so, but I don't want to do that.

Just wondering if there is an AUTOMATIC command line option for Chrome to prevent the cache from filling up like that? I looked a bit on the net but couldn't find one for command line options and ramdisk. Thanks in advance for anyone with this information.

I would also like to mention that Opera now works using a Ramdisk with the same settings that are mentioned here for Chrome. Just thought I would mention that for anyone who did not know.

And for those of you who do not know this : You can get a great FREE Ramdisk software with no limitations. Just go to this link and download what is the last FREEWARE version of SoftPerfects Ramdisk : Last Freeware Version of SoftPerfects Ramdisk
Although it warns you that it doesn't work well with CCLEANER when running it the first time. That's why I use Privazer now.

Anyway, just thought I would ask about the Cache issue and mention a few other things that some of you might find useful.

 

[Freki123]

hiya does anyone know about AMD Radeon RAMDisk you can get 4GB free and if your machine runs an AMD memory product you can get uo to 6 GB any ideas or suggestions

On win 10 64bit ,1803 latest patches it runs fine for me. Its my place for the sandboxie container

 

[TairikuOkami]

Other unlimited option and updated is ImDisk Toolkit - but it is also unsigned.

Example, you have Chromes cache running in a 1GB Ramdisk, it works great, with one exception, if you start to watch a streaming movie or something that eventually fills up the cache and you have the Cache set to 1GB, once the cache fills up it stops streaming until you manually clear the cache.

Try to set the max cache limit for Chrome.

How To Change Google Chrome's Cache Location And Size - gHacks Tech News

AMD Radeon(TM) RAMDisk

Yes, I use this one, it automatically offers to move Temp folders there. I have also the whole browser and documents (game saves) stored there.

 

[shmu26]

Do you see a significant performance improvement when running Chrome in Ram disk, as opposed to SSD?
Any other advantages to Ram disk, besides performance?

 

[TairikuOkami]

Any other advantages to Ram disk, besides performance?

If you move caches, temps and various potentially dangerous folders there, they will be 100% cleaned upon reboot (if you do not save RAMDisk).
A simple cleanup could be prevented by an opened process, but once RAM is cleaned, it will be gone, any opened process would most likely crash.

Do you see a significant performance improvement when running Chrome in Ram disk, as opposed to SSD?

Even the slowest RAM is faster than the fastest SSD, especially talking about an access time, so it is faster, but not that significantly.

 

[Serious Noize]

Other unlimited option and updated is ImDisk Toolkit - but it is also unsigned.


Try to set the max cache limit for Chrome.

How To Change Google Chrome's Cache Location And Size - gHacks Tech News


Yes, I use this one, it automatically offers to move Temp folders there. I have also the whole browser and documents (game saves) stored there.

Thank you TairikuOkami! That seems to have resolved my issue with the ram disk filling up and freezing when watching streaming videos where I was left with that spinning arrow symbol over the video after the cache on the ram disk was full.

I had the size of the ram disk set in chrome command line and the location, but I noticed that it mentions on the page link you shared about adding it to the registry also, I did not know about that so I added the location and size to the registry and so far no more problems with the streaming videos stopping and freezing.

I don't know how it is handling the video though because I did a test and filled up the ram disk and started streaming some video and I noticed it writing files with the size listed as 0 kb even though the ram disk was showing as full. I checked the previous location on the hard drive for Chrome's cache and nothing was writing there, I thought perhaps it would default back to the hard drive if the ram disk was full but in my case it didn't. So would I be correct in assuming that once the cache is full on the ram disk and I am streaming video that it is processing it directly rather than using the cache?

Either way, I have no idea about none of that, but I can say that so far it's working just as I wanted it to, using the ram disk Cache and when full not freezing the streaming video.

Thanks again!