Use a RAM disk to speed browsing on slower Macs

Aug 30, '04 09:57:00AM

Contributed by: metiure

I remember when I was young (OS 9 times!), there were some tips about using a RAM disk as a super-speedy hard disk. Any program put in there would benefit from a huge speed increase due to the fact RAM is much quicker at retrieving data than a physical disk is. One of the most-used tips was to put the browser's cache folder, or even the whole browser, in the RAM disk and then surf and benefit from instantaneous cached pages. The problem was RAM was expensive in those days, and those of us who had the chance to get a 64MB RAM module wouldn't dare to spoil it with a RAM disk!

Two things are different now: first, it's OS X times, and second, RAM is cheap and everyone has (at least) 512MB of RAM, it seems. Well, in OS X, you really wouldn't need nor want a RAM disk. Besides, there are almost no utils to create RAM disk anymore in Panther. Who needs a RAM disk? Well, all of us who have plenty of RAM but an antique Mac, do. Like me: i have 640MB of RAM in my old iMac G3 500, running 10.3.3. It would be a great idea to dedicate some of this amount of RAM to better things than system memory.

So I created a RAM disk (with the excellent freeware Disk Velox) and then moved the Safari cache (from ~/users -> Library -> Safari) onto it. Then I created an alias of the new RAM-based cache folder and placed it back in the default Safari folder. So now the Safari cache points directly to the RAM disk. And I started to surf the Internet, and I couldn't believe it! Never had my usual sites had opened so fast! VersionTracker, MacFixIt, MacOSXHints, everything is instantaneous. Really makes a huge difference in browsing experience. So, who needs a DP G5 2,5 when you have a RAM disk :-)?

Some problems remain, though: there is no OS X RAM disk creator with an option to save the RAM to a disk image on shutdown, so everything is lost the next time you restart. It would be great to be able to save the cache between startups. Second problem: it would make sense to open the RAM disk before launching Safari, so the previously-saved cache is ready to be used. I think some little AppleScript would do that, but I have no AS skills. Right now, I enjoy my speedy Safari, but I hope someone can suggest some further enhancements.

[robg adds: I tested this, but didn't see any change on my reasonably fast machine. I'll try to test it later today on our G3/500, where I expect there will be a more notable increase in speed. Disk Velox is a really simple-to-use RAM disk creator, though -- just enter a name and size, click a button, and you're done. Quite nice...]

Comments (14)


Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20040827132909881