Storing Cache in RAM

For information only, without warranty or support.

Typically this is NOT suitable for systems with less than 16GB of RAM.

ASUS ROG RAMDisk is specifically designed to run on ASUS ROG motherboards. It should run on many other motherboards from other manufacturers, but if it is not compatible, it will tell you when you install it and quit with a bios not compatible notice.  Always create a system restore point before installing new software.

Please note that Genesis team are unable to give support with the configuration and set up of RAM Drives and that this article is for information purposes only.   The software is not created by Genesis and therefore we imply no guarantees as to the suitability or stability of this product for your system

Mechanical drives are slow to access files such as your Second Life Cache and whilst Solid State drives are much faster, constant writing can shorten their lifespan.

A RAM drive is located in your computer memory and is therefore the fastest access point in your entire system.

Forget the RAM drives of yesteryear where everything was forgotten from memory as soon as your computer was switched off. They have come a long way since then.

Modern RAM drives create an image file automatically when your computer is shut down or rebooted and saves this to the hard disk (or SSD).  

When Windows is started, it copies this image back into the RAM drive, so you can continue seamlessly.

On a 16GB computer, typically you would allocate 2.1GB of memory to the RAM drive and 2.0GB to your Second Life cache.  Always leave a little surplus space and RAMDisk will and the Viewer will work in harmony with each other and manage the space optimally without user intervention.  If for whatever reason RAMDisk is running low on space, it will tell you, but if you have set your cache slightly lower than the amount you assigned to the drive, you will hardly ever see a message about low disk space on the drive.

Having a 2GB RAMDisk will leave you with 14GB for of normal running.  This 'loss' of memory should be unnoticeable and what is more, the free RAMDisk by ROG/ASUS uses Dynamic memory allocation.  This means that if that amount of 'disk space'  is not being used, then the drive decreases in size, releasing the memory back to the computers main memory pool.

Extract the x64 files folder and run set-up.  Then tell it how much memory you wish to allocate.  It will ask to reboot your computer.    Once you have done this, load your viewer, and in preferences, under Network, select the location of your Ramdisk, but be sure to set the size of the cache just slightly below the size of the RAM drive.   Cache's larger than 3GB seldom offer any benefit, because the index of these files grows proportionally bigger too and therefore takes longer to look-up.

For added streamlining, tell your Antivirus software to exclude the RAMDrive, (provided you only keep your cache files on it).

You are now set up and ready to go.

A couple of pointers..

You may need to disable 'Fast Boot ' (Fast Restart) in Windows as sometimes this can shut down the system ahead of the RAMDrive being written back to disk when shutting down your PC.

You may become a little more aware of your CPU fan at times of high impact.  You may notice your computer takes fractionally longer to shut down as the RAMDrive copies your cache back to a single image file, ready for the next time your PC starts.

Other considerations: Make sure your viewer preferences for cache, point to the RAM Drive letter you choose (or are automatically assigned).  Once set up, if you wish to clear the cache, don't use "clear cache" as this will return the location to the default path, use the size slider and move it a fraction to trigger a new clean cache in the directory you assigned.

You can download RAMDisk from this external site: https://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/misc/utils/RAMDisk_Win7-8-8-1_V20206.zip

See more information about setting up RAMDisk at this external site https://www.technipages.com/ram-disk-asus-rog-ramdisk

If this specific RAM drive is not compatible with your computer, many other RAM Drives are available, some are free but limited space allocation.  We chose this particular RAM Drive as it is free to use without any limitations.