8 GB of RAM - Creating a RAM drive?

[TwinAdk]

Hi all!

Just an idea, would it be feasible to use say 2GB of RAM for a drive used to store pictures on, for even better performance? Or is the UFS 2.1 just as fast?

This is an idea for a custom ROM feature, hence the chosen forum section!

Kind Regards
TwinAdk

 

[shazzy1]

LPDDR4 is much faster, But as we know RAM is a volatile memory and what ever you do goes puff!!!


Unless we create a dump of the ram when rebooting/shutdown-ing

 

[TwinAdk]

LPDDR4 is much faster, But as we know RAM is a volatile memory and what ever you do goes puff!!!


Unless we create a dump of the ram when rebooting/shutdown-ing

Good point! Possibly create a control panel to control the usage of the ram drive, and have the content moved from RD to defined destination when the app that saves the data (camera app, download manager, Chrome, Firefox, etc) is no longer in focus?

And then symlink between locations so the system is left clueless :good::victory:

Great ideas here!!

Sent from my NEM-L21 using XDA Labs

 

[Chaleman]

LOL! Almost the same question, 30 minutes earlier...

https://forum.xda-developers.com/oneplus-5/help/best-to-extra-ram-t3625570

 

[ABotelho23]

Linux probably supports RAM drives out of the box, so I doubt it would be that much work.

What the heck are you doing with pictures on a phone that you require better performance than UFS 2.1?

 

[TwinAdk]

LOL! Almost the same question, 30 minutes earlier...

https://forum.xda-developers.com/oneplus-5/help/best-to-extra-ram-t3625570

Yeah, though that's general cache thoughts, this is the creation of a drive, usable by any app, or the user Great minds think alike!

Linux probably supports RAM drives out of the box, so I doubt it would be that much work.

What the heck are you doing with pictures on a phone that you require better performance than UFS 2.1?

I'm just thinking of the write speed that will increase. Then the content can be loaded off the drive when the user is leaving it idle. It will give an even better experience when writing stuff to disk. Do you see the potential that the users write command is done instantly, so the user can move on with things. The system can then handle the offload in the background when the user do not have to wait

I would love that feature!

Kind Regards
TwinAdk

Sent from my NEM-L21 using XDA Labs

 

[caki25]

Not sure if swap is still in use, but on my old Xperia (and a couple of others) swap was created as a RD and supposedly it helped a lot. With a beast like OP5 though not sure if that would help and if this is still in place and used .. I stopped following a couple threads when I broke that Xperia so kind of digging from memory

 

[TwinAdk]

Not sure if swap is still in use, but on my old Xperia (and a couple of others) swap was created as a RD and supposedly it helped a lot. With a beast like OP5 though not sure if that would help and if this is still in place and used .. I stopped following a couple threads when I broke that Xperia so kind of digging from memory

On older phones I guess RD makes more sense, but as long as RAM is faster than disk (and you have RAM to spare) RD makes some sense :silly:



Sent from my NEM-L21 using XDA Labs

 

[davfiala]

Not sure if swap is still in use, but on my old Xperia (and a couple of others) swap was created as a RD and supposedly it helped a lot. With a beast like OP5 though not sure if that would help and if this is still in place and used .. I stopped following a couple threads when I broke that Xperia so kind of digging from memory

Swap created as ramdisk? That doesn't make any sense. Mounting a ramdisk as swap is worse than useless.

 

[caki25]

Swap created as ramdisk? That doesn't make any sense. Mounting a ramdisk as swap is worse than useless.

it does, if you use compression to sort of extend the size of the memory. If configured properly, it might bypass android's swappiness, but still keep the app's data in RAM for faster switchover. Not the most elegant solution, but it just might work. With so much memory that the OP5 has, that it can't really exhaust it, it's a bit pointless.

On older phones I guess RD makes more sense, but as long as RAM is faster than disk (and you have RAM to spare) RD makes some sense :silly:
Sent from my NEM-L21 using XDA Labs

yeah, agreed, was just thinking aloud. I don't see that much into the internals of Android, but as you said earlier, some sort of quick cache might be worth a shot.

 

[yubimusubi]

Running a ramdisk as a mount for /tmp is a common trick on Linux to make processes that write a lot of tempfiles run a bit faster. I don't know how Android handles tempfiles, but if it stores them all in one place like on GNU-style systems in should work as well. But I suspect not many Android apps write tempfiles anyway...

 

[ABotelho23]

Yeah, though that's general cache thoughts, this is the creation of a drive, usable by any app, or the user Great minds think alike!


I'm just thinking of the write speed that will increase. Then the content can be loaded off the drive when the user is leaving it idle. It will give an even better experience when writing stuff to disk. Do you see the potential that the users write command is done instantly, so the user can move on with things. The system can then handle the offload in the background when the user do not have to wait

I would love that feature!

Kind Regards
TwinAdk

Sent from my NEM-L21 using XDA Labs

Of course the write speed will increase. But for pictures, would it not be negligible?

 

[TwinAdk]

Of course the write speed will increase. But for pictures, would it not be negligible?

Yes, it would be :laugh:

Sent from my NEM-L21 using XDA Labs

 

[onicrom]

using tmpfs would be much easier than a ramdisk.

off the top of my head you would need to work out a few things

if you wanted it to be 'persistent' you would need to run some kind of scheduled rsync or background process to sync the data (lsync) to a dir on the ufs filesystem

either way you open yourself to data loss if during the scheduled window, or during the lsync, the phone reboots or crashes

you would also need to write an init script to create the tmpfs mount and sync back the data from the ufs filesystem

What would be a good candidate for 'ultra fast data'? Maybe the dir the camera stores files? What about the cached data each app stores?... you would probably have to limit this to a certain set of apps because you could run into an issue with space depending on how large you make the tmpfs mount...is that even something possible? I can't remember I haven't look at where the cache is stored

 

[yubimusubi]

A memcached style setup might be nice... But that's probably similar to how the "app priority" feature works.

 

[LOS ER]

I'm actually looking for a way to create a ramdisk on my OnePlus 3T.
Is there any detailed description/explanation of how to make one or if there are any apps available that can do it for me?
Respond asap.

 

[Desmanto]

I'm actually looking for a way to create a ramdisk on my OnePlus 3T.
Is there any detailed description/explanation of how to make one or if there are any apps available that can do it for me?
Respond asap.

Sorry to bump up old thread, but maybe other are googling and directed here. So I better post my finding here and maybe other can benefit.

I have been searching for the holy grail for so long and finally found it. I am using RN5 whyred and trying to reserve 100 MB RAM for temporary storage and file processing for my Automagic flow. It is meant to reduce write cycle on the emmc. I have been trying to mount tmpfs on the /storage/emulate/0 and found out not working, the file still stored on emmc. Because I tried to reboot and the file still there.

I am currently using custom ROM AEX 6.7 Pie 9.0. When I use command mount, I can find tmpfs is mounted on /storage/self. So I thought to create a new folder inside it and chmod 777, /storage/self/ramdrive. Then I copy file to it using MiXplorer. And the speed is amazing.

I then check on the command free | grep Shmem
The size is increasing, means the RAM is being used for the storage. Deleting the file will reduce it, so it is working !
Testing copying file to internal storage, 750 MB takes about 12 seconds, while copy to the ramdrive takes about 5 seconds. Leave the file at ramdrive and restart the phone, the file disappear. So it is confirmed that the file is stored at RAM.

So for other, if you want to mount ramdrive, you need root. You need at least terminal emulator. But MiXplorer with root access can also create the folder. Try to check your tmpfs file first using

mount | grep tmpfs

I found several and use /storage/self. So I create additional folder there

mkdir /storage/self/ramdrive
chmod 777 /storage/self/ramdrive

This folder disappear at every reboot, so I use Automagic startup to recreate it at every reboot.

I then point my flow to save or process file at that path. By default the limit is half from the total RAM, which is 2 GB from my 4 GB RAM. I am thinking to find the script to limit the size, but rather than playing with the mount script, I better disciplined my flow to not store too much here.

Using the ramdrive, now I can lavishly store and delete temporary file there without worrying reducing my emmc lifespan.