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Originally Posted by eschwartz
How much faster is Firefox from a ramdisk anyway?
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Subjectively, it seems faster, but how much is a good question. I don't offhand know how to really measure it.
The first iteration simply placed the Firefox cache there. Firefox makes that easy. Go into about
:config, and create a new string preference called
browser.cache.disk.parent_directory. Set the value of the preference to the location where you want the cache to be. (Here, that's Z:\FFramdisk.) Firefox will create the cache where that preference specifies.
I don't bother to preserve the cache between boots, though I could. I have a 100mbps cable modem connection, and it's simpler to let FF rebuild from scratch. You can also specify the maximum cache size in about
:config, but I haven't done so. Thus far, the largest I've seen it get is about 190MB.
I also have Google Chrome set to have cache on the ramdisk, but that was a more complex exercise, because Chrome doesn't provide a way to specify where cache lives. Doing it required OS level hacking.
NTFS5 supports *nix style hard links and symbolic links, but does not expose the functionality by default. You need an advanced utility package from MS or a third-party offering to use the functionality. I use a freeware utility called
Link Shell Extension from William Schinagl. LSE adds
Pick Link Source and
Drop Link As selections to the right-click context menu in Explorer.
Chrome attempts to create the cache directory under the profile directory on the HD. (Here, that's in C:\Users\Dennis\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache.) I created a symlink from the HD cache directory to the ramdisk. Chrome follows the symlink, and puts the cache on the ramdisk.
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It's things like this (accidents do happen) that make me rather hesitant about storing permanent info on a ramdisk...
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The info isn't that critical or permanent. This was an annoyance, not a disaster.
It was also a sharp pointy reminder that accidents
do happen, and I'm thinking about ways to automagically update the profile zip on the HD outside of the standard process. Right now, a shutdown script does it when Windows is shutdown/rebooted, but that doesn't help in a power fail because the script never gets run.)
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Dennis