ramdisks

[Mike Wright]

Tim wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-04-15 at 13:42 -0700, Mike Wright wrote:
>> I looked at tmpfs but that doesn't seem to accomplish what I want.
>> With ramdisks I can mount them over the top of pre-existing
>> directories, play to my heart's content, and leave the underlying
>> files untouched.
> 
> You can do that with tmpfs, too.  Which method's best for you will
> depend on other requirements.  
> 
> Some notes:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMPFS

Thanks, Tim.

I looked further into that and found a couple of limitations that wiped 
out the gains I was seeking.  Apparently a tmpfs is sparse and if 
resources become tight the least used blocks end up in swap.

My goal was to avoid disk access altogether.

Nonetheless, with your suggestions and those of others I now have a much 
greater understanding of both tmpfs and ramdisks.

(I must add that it's very spooky working and not hearing the clatter of 
physical drives, added to the extremely fast response times on an older, 
  CPU and RAM limited, machine.  I'm a happy camper now!)

:m)