Free RAMDisk  for Windows 2000 / Windows XP / Windows Server 2003

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Environment: 32-bit versions of Windows 2000 / Windows XP / Windows Server 2003 / Windows PE


About this RAMDisk ....

The major parts of this installable RAM disk for Windows 2000 and Windows XP are a RAM disk driver file ( RAMDisk.sys ), an Installer/Property sheet provider ( RAMDisk.dll ) and an installation file ( RAMDisk.inf ).

The "Free" driver version 5.0.2.2 is almost identical with the Microsoft sample driver ( See KB Article Q257405 ). The installer/property sheet provider DLL however adds additional possibilities to change the Drive Letter and Disk Size in a more user-friendly way using the device manager. This makes this package mature to concur with other RAM Disk products on the market.

The downloadable package of this "Free" version contains the necessary installation files for the RAM disk driver. The package contains also the sources of this software within the "RAMDISK_sources.ZIP". It allows to freely modify the files and rebuild the binaries using "Visual Studio.NET" and the "Windows DDK for XP build 2600". Both the driver and the installer are extended with a lot of trace-outputs to learn how the OS interacts with these binaries. The Installer sources demonstrate also how you can use basic MFC functions
( CString , CArray, ... ) within a Driver Property Sheet Provider.

The disk size of this version is restricted to 64 MByte. Furthermore, as with the Miscrosoft sample, the free version is not fit to be used as a reliable product in a daily used environment. The driver may stop working and return "Incorrect Function" when it is accessed.

Users that need a more reliable solution , should option for the "evaluation" version of the "RAMDisk Extended Basic" which provides the same simplicity. The "evaluation" version never expires and the "popup" reminder is seldomly displayed when selecting the FAT file system and disk sizes less or equal 64 MB. The extended evaluation version can be downloaded here : RAMDisk_Evaluation_52102PRO.zip. Please visit the main page to purchase a version that allows to configure the RAMDisk to obtain more than 64 MB and never have the reminder displayed. The RAMDisk Enterprise and the RAMDisk Enterprise Lite versions do not have the 64 MB size restriction and the instabilities mentioned above are solved due to the support of additional interfaces with the OS. Also, those interfaces allow the use of chkdsk.exe , format.exe , etc... Watch this "How to Set up a RAM Disk for Free" video at http://blip.tv/file/467739 or at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SJ7dc-Eq9w

Download and Installation of the Free Version

If you used the original Microsoft RAMDisk sample ( Q257405 ), you have to uninstall it first before installing this "Free" version. It is also recommended to delete the Driver Class of the MS Sample Driver from the registry by deleting next entries and their sub-keys :

 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Control\Class\{78A1C341-4539-11d3-B88D-00C04FAD5171}]
 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{78A1C341-4539-11d3-B88D-00C04FAD5171}]

Also, search within the %SYSTEMROOT%\Inf for the original *.inf file that contains the text
"ClassGuid={78A1C341-4539-11d3-B88D-00C04FAD5171}" and delete this *.inf file.

It happens that the RAMDisk is not properly functioning anymore after you increased the disk-size. This is due to lack of contiguous memory space within the physical RAM of your system. In most of the cases, a reboot of the PC will solve this problem. If this fails however, you will have to fall back to a lower disk size.

The driver is built using Visual Studio .NET 2002 and the Windows XP DDK ( 2600 ).
Download : RAMDisk.exe.

Other rebuilds of this driver and property page are also available :
- using Visual Studio 60 and the W2000 DDK : RAMDisk_VS60.zip
- using Visual Studio .NET 2003 and the Windows Server DDK ( 3790 ): RAMDisk_VSNET2003.zip

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