Ramdisks
       An addition to James Judges' article in issue 27.

                       By Simon Avery

I read with interest James Judges' well-written and informative
article in November's Syntax, but I thought I'd have a bash at the
subject myself, for the benefit of the PC owning fraternity.

Myself, I use a ramdisk very frequently, and find it very useful
in copying files and entire disks, quickly and reliably.

The ramdisk utility I use is called SRDisk, which is very good. It
can mimic any normal floppy drive, I use mine as a 720k, but
SRDisk is unique in that it can re-size the ramdrive whilst there
are programs on it.  You simply have to type a few words at the
command line, and you've got a larger, or a smaller drive, any
size that your memory will permit. The good thing about this
program is that it will not allow you to reduce the size of the
ramdrive, if there is not enough free space on it, thus any
programs that are residing there are safe. It also comes into its
own when copying disks, as DISKCOPY, the DOS copying program, will
copy a floppy disk into the ramdrive, then back out again, only
having to change the disks and will automatically format the
target floppy if needed.

Installation is simply enough, you only have to add a line to your
CONFIG.SYS file notifying the computer that you want a ramdrive,
and it will do the rest on bootup.  It automatically assigns the
drive a valid letter (for example, I have two floppy drives and a
hard drive. Part of the hard drive is compressed using Stacker,
which makes another logical hard drive: "D:". The Ramdrive then
gives you another drive: "E:". This can be switched around or
changed to suit your requirements), then creates and formats the
ramdrive. The whole process adds about a second to your bootup
time, which is negligible.

James mentioned the speed of the ramdrive, but I don't think he
stressed quite HOW fast it is. Of course this depends on what
speed memory you have fitted to your system (I have 70ns SIMMS),
but there is little difference. To format a normal floppy drive to
720k takes around 80-90 seconds. To format a ramdrive, takes under
ONE second! Impressed? It's worth doing it a few times to see
DOS's format routine tested to the limit (no, you don't need any
special programs for a ramdrive, all the DOS functions treat it as
a normal floppy in every respect).

One other very important factor about using a ramdrive, is that
when you're copying files, or decompressing ZIP files etc, to see
whether they are suitable, is that you do not put any wear or tear
on your very expensive hard drive.

I've used SRDisk for quite a while and have found no compatibility
problems with any other program. The only time I have lost
programs is when I have run something which has crashed or 'hung'
the computer thus necessitating a reset. Apart from that, it's
proved 100% reliable, even more so than a floppy disk.

The requirements for a ramdrive are fairly standard, at least 2meg
of memory (I have four), but if you want to emulate a 1.44M
floppy, you'll need more than the extra 1 meg.  The device driver
that is installed on bootup takes only 1.3K and on most systems,
this can be loaded high so you are left with as much free base
memory as you can get.

In case you are wondering at my effusive praise for SRDisk, I can
assure you that I didn't write it, nor have any part of its
development. I just think that this is the best ramdrive program I
have seen!  If you want a copy of SRDisk, the shareware version is
available from my Shareware library on disk UTIL005 for œ1.50,
together with some other useful utilities.

                          Simon Avery
                        Hamlyn's Cottage
                         Old Exeter Road
                           Chudleigh
                            S Devon
                            TQ13 0DX
                        Tel: 0626 853254