Custom Search
|
|
Custom Search
|
|
|
does windows ever slow to a crawl. do you ever click on something and then hear your hard drive tick for half an hour before your program opens. when you open 17 ie boxes, napster, ms word and excel, photoshop, does the playback on your internet porn become jumpy and undesirable? if so then the iram is the product for you. but what does the iram do? well timmy, thats easy. it becomes a hard drive on your computer. here is the kicker. its a ram based hard drive. itll set you back about 130 dollars for the unit shipped and you will have to buy 4 gigs of ram for it, but if you hate waiting on your system like a moth hates a bugzapper, then you will probably find it worth your money. being the impatient chap i am i think it was just a tad (only a tad though) pricey but i am glad that i have purchased it, and i think it was worth the money. there are 4 reason why people dont like vista. they are: 1) they dont have the right hardware for it. they didnt do their homework and their mobo isnt supported so vista throws them random bsods and they label the os with words like "unstable" and "intolerable" and "crackwhore". 2) its different. if you use it and get used to it (and turn off uac) it has a lot of things many people will like. 3) they arent windows people, or its too complicated. these people dont like to learn new things. granted windows does have a learning curve of a punch bowl, once you learn it you will like it. 4) its slow bloatware. that is partially true, but if you do the right tweaking and you have decent hardware, you can make it "not bad". thats where iram comes in. the iram is treated like a hard drive to your pc but uses ram. here are some faqs (that i just made up... email me some more). q: why cant i install vista on it? a: vista takes like 20 gigs to install. iram tops out at 4. you can install xp on it im told but that is beyond the scope of this guide (im to lazy to research it for you). q: but if i turn off my pc wont i lose everything on it? a: yes and no. it uses the wake on lan feature to keep the chips powered. it also has a battery built into it that is supposed to keep your info good for like 10 hours if you unplug it from the wall. it also has a button on it to clear everything (i presume by inturrupting all power and letting nature take its course). so if you use it for storage then make sure you have a backup on a regular hard drive. that way when your cat chews through the cord, and you dont get a new one until after you bury the cat, hold a funeral procession for your childrens sake, get to the store, buy a new cord come home and plug the pc back in, your data stored on the drive will still be there. q: but i have hard drives in my pc. how is this better? a: easy. your hard drive in your pc relies on moving parts and puts data all over the place. this is why you defrag your hard drive. if you dont know what defrag is then this article is probably too advanced for you. the sata port on your pc is fast, but only as fast as the hard drive can feed it. the iram doesnt need to seek for your data. it doesnt care if your data is fragmented. it can deliver any info as much as you put on it as fast as your sata (sata 1) port can carry it. it is limited to sata 1 at this time. q: how do you use it to make your machine faster? a: as some of you can see from the second question, anything vista has to do with your hard drive is slow. many of you know of things like the paging file. this file is a file that vista uses like it were ram on your hard drive when you are low on ram. have you ever been doing one thing in ie, and then switch to another program, and have vista take like 10 seconds to reopen the ie page? that is because vista splashed all the info that was the ie page from ram onto the hard drive paging file to make room in ram for the other program. you switch back and vista has to get all your info back off the hard drive before it can do anything with it. slow process, even for the most maintained drives. vista needs a paging file. its a good fallback unless you have like 8 gigs of ram. solution, put your paging file on your iram. right click my computer, click properties, click advanced system settings, under performance click settings, click advanced, click change, click on the iram and turn on system managed size, and click on you main drive and click turn off paging file. apply ok ok ok enter and ok. you may need to restart. you will notice many things, like for 1, vista will never ever hang when you right click something. it will almost always be responsive (barring your processor use). if you have like 4 or 8 gigs of ram you may choose to leave a paging file on for your main drive or another one. the reason is because the general rule of thumb is to make the paging file at least the size of your ram, but if you have excessive ram, and you dont run into memory problems, then you can probably leave it turned off if you have it on the iram. tip, dont make iram the a or b drive. i thought it would be cool but my setting kept reverting back to the default after restarts. turns out vista simply doesnt like you using an a or b drive for system files. i made it x instead (much cooler). right click on computer, click manage, click disk management, right click on the iram, click change drive letter, and assign. it defaults to the next internal hard drive you have, but it will mess with other programs (your winamp playlist) if you have external hds hooked up. it will push them down the ladder 1 drive letter. reassign the iram and then reassign your externals if necessary. another huge performance boost will come from telling vista to use 1 to 2 gigs of this drive for readyboost. i tell it to use 1 gig. open my computer, right click on the iram drive, click on properties. this is a good opportunity to name it something cool like bitchen or willitwork or puppies! or something that makes you happy. click on ready boost, click use this device, and kick the thing over to 1 gig. you should begin to notice many performance boosts, especially on software you use a lot. another boost will come from moving your temporary internet files to that drive. under ie(7) goto tool, click internet option, click move folder, give it a spot on the iram, and then let windows do its log off and log on again thing to complete the move. you should notice a difference when, especially on pages you visit frequently. you can also take that opportunity to kick up the size to 100 or 150 megs. this is a personal decision. i just like a little extra cause thats the way i am. next section: individual programs. tell any program out there you want to use that uses a scratch file (same as a paging file but with a different name and for the program only) like photoshop, you will notice many things if you tell it to use the iram. this is why i dont recommend using the whole drive for readyboost and the paging file. you will notice with photo shop some very neat things, like when you are using the preview feature for your filters, the preview will pop up almost immediately. im talking faster than a dealer running from the cops. you will click on a different filter, add them, refresh them, and im working with 1680x1050 sized photos (desktop size on my main monitor). if you photoshop a lot then the iram is a must for you unless you have lots of ram (once again). a good workaround is if you have 8 or more gigs of ram is to make a software ramdisk for photoshop for improvements. you wont get the system performance improvements with that one but it should make photoshop run smoothly, although this method is untested by me. im also told that it is a godsend for software related to video editing, audio editing, and video/audio capture. if you are the type to make your own dvr it might just be what you need. if you know how to operate the lightswitch to your bedroom and you have another way you think windows will benefit from this type of device then send me an email smirnof100@msn.com -- there are other ram based drives out there that are a) larger b) have solid state backup) and c) use sata2 and even 1 with 2 sata ports, but since i cant actually find somewhere to buy one for less than 5000 moneys, the iram is the only decent solution i can recommend. peace, and good luck.
|