Using a RAMdisk I know I am saving writes to my SSD, this is why I am interested in using one. Is there a way to disable the activity log completely? In my specific use case I don't need to know how much data hasn't been written to my SDD. I wish there was a way to disable it. It's a pretty neat feature and I am sure many people find it useful.
Does RAM FS do any data collection that sends to a server? Is this activity log sent as well?
The option "do not create the recycle bin folder and system files" seems self explanatory. Is there a reason why you wouldn't want to create the recycle bin and other system files? Do you get a performance boost by disabling the creation of these system files?
Does RAM FS only create NTFS file systems? Is it possible to create exFAT partitions too? I tried to format the partition manually in windows but I was not able to.
In the advanced tab there is a switch to allow creation of a removable drive. When I create it, in explorer the drive shows up as a regular drive. Is there a way to emulate a real removable USB Flash drive? A real one shows up in explorer below all hard drives.
I use Virtualbox. This feature would be particularly useful because after I have initiated the VM, there are case scenarios where I need to pass a USB Flash drive to the VM on the fly to save data directly to it, rather than through the UI or mapped folders. I can do this with a real USB Flash drive but not with RAM FS or RAM Disk. Is this functionality you would be able to implement? Additionally is there a way to create other file systems for removable drives (FAT32)? If the drive is small FAT will be the only file system that I'll be able to assign.
Maybe I need to open RAM FS as administrator? I haven't done that yet.
Lots of questions. Answer what you can. Thanks.
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How to disable activity log
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Bob S.
How to disable activity log 14 August 2026, 23:48 |
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Re: How to disable activity log 15 August 2026, 09:38 |
Admin Registered: 20 years ago Posts: 2 106 |
Below are the answers to all your questions:
The activity statistics
No switch to turn them off yet, but they're smaller than the name suggests: four numbers, being bytes read, bytes written, peak read speed and peak write speed. No filenames, no timestamps, no record of what you did. They're counted in memory and the four totals are saved to the driver's own registry key so the "since installation" figure survives a reboot. That's the whole thing.
Does anything get sent to a server?
No telemetry, no analytics. The statistics never leave your machine, and nothing about your volumes or files is ever transmitted.
Why disable the Recycle Bin and system folders
Because deleting a file into a Recycle Bin doesn't free anything. It moves the file to a hidden folder where it keeps occupying space, so on a RAM disk your memory stays used after you thought you'd freed it. With the option ticked, deletes are permanent and the RAM comes back immediately. System Volume Information belongs to System Restore and shadow copies, which can't do anything with a volume that empties at reboot. So it's about not quietly wasting RAM rather than speed, and the performance difference is nil.
exFAT / NTFS / formatting
RAM FS is a file system, not a virtual disk. There's no block device underneath it, no sectors, nothing to format. It's a driver that answers file operations straight out of memory, and that's where the speed comes from: no MFT, no journal, no storage stack and no on-disk format to maintain.
So it can't be exFAT or FAT32, and it isn't really NTFS either. It only reports "NTFS" for compatibility: Windows treats file systems outside a hard-coded list as network paths, and with an honest "RAMFS"name you couldn't even launch an installer from the volume.
If you want a volume you format yourself, you should use our other product, SoftPerfect RAM Disk, which creates a virtual disk you can format as NTFS, exFAT or FAT32.
In simple words: RAM Disk gives you a disk; RAM FS gives you a file system.
The "removable drive" switch
It changes what Windows reports about the volume, removable rather than fixed. It exists mainly for backup software: Windows Backup and VSS interrogate every fixed volume for shadow-copy support, which a RAM FS volume genuinely can't provide, and this makes them skip it cleanly.
It can't make Windows believe a USB device is present, because there isn't one. Explorer's grouping and icons come from the device and bus beneath the volume, not from that flag.
Passing it to VirtualBox
Unfortunately this isn't something either product can do. VirtualBox's USB passthrough takes a physical device from the host's USB stack and hands it to the guest, so for our volumes to appear there we'd have to emulate USB hardware on the host bus, which is a completely different class of driver from a file system or a disk.
And there's a harder limit behind it: anything you attach to the guest as a drive belongs to the guest exclusively while attached, so the host can't read what's written to it until you detach. Getting data from guest to host as it's written needs a shared channel by definition, whether that's VirtualBox shared folders or a network share on the host that you map inside the guest. If the share points at a RAM FS volume, the writes stay in RAM and never touch your SSD, which I think is the real goal here.
Administrator rights
Not needed. By default any user can create and dismount volumes, so that isn't what's standing in your way. (An administrator can restrict it on a shared machine, but that's off by default.)
The activity statistics
No switch to turn them off yet, but they're smaller than the name suggests: four numbers, being bytes read, bytes written, peak read speed and peak write speed. No filenames, no timestamps, no record of what you did. They're counted in memory and the four totals are saved to the driver's own registry key so the "since installation" figure survives a reboot. That's the whole thing.
Does anything get sent to a server?
No telemetry, no analytics. The statistics never leave your machine, and nothing about your volumes or files is ever transmitted.
Why disable the Recycle Bin and system folders
Because deleting a file into a Recycle Bin doesn't free anything. It moves the file to a hidden folder where it keeps occupying space, so on a RAM disk your memory stays used after you thought you'd freed it. With the option ticked, deletes are permanent and the RAM comes back immediately. System Volume Information belongs to System Restore and shadow copies, which can't do anything with a volume that empties at reboot. So it's about not quietly wasting RAM rather than speed, and the performance difference is nil.
exFAT / NTFS / formatting
RAM FS is a file system, not a virtual disk. There's no block device underneath it, no sectors, nothing to format. It's a driver that answers file operations straight out of memory, and that's where the speed comes from: no MFT, no journal, no storage stack and no on-disk format to maintain.
So it can't be exFAT or FAT32, and it isn't really NTFS either. It only reports "NTFS" for compatibility: Windows treats file systems outside a hard-coded list as network paths, and with an honest "RAMFS"name you couldn't even launch an installer from the volume.
If you want a volume you format yourself, you should use our other product, SoftPerfect RAM Disk, which creates a virtual disk you can format as NTFS, exFAT or FAT32.
In simple words: RAM Disk gives you a disk; RAM FS gives you a file system.
The "removable drive" switch
It changes what Windows reports about the volume, removable rather than fixed. It exists mainly for backup software: Windows Backup and VSS interrogate every fixed volume for shadow-copy support, which a RAM FS volume genuinely can't provide, and this makes them skip it cleanly.
It can't make Windows believe a USB device is present, because there isn't one. Explorer's grouping and icons come from the device and bus beneath the volume, not from that flag.
Passing it to VirtualBox
Unfortunately this isn't something either product can do. VirtualBox's USB passthrough takes a physical device from the host's USB stack and hands it to the guest, so for our volumes to appear there we'd have to emulate USB hardware on the host bus, which is a completely different class of driver from a file system or a disk.
And there's a harder limit behind it: anything you attach to the guest as a drive belongs to the guest exclusively while attached, so the host can't read what's written to it until you detach. Getting data from guest to host as it's written needs a shared channel by definition, whether that's VirtualBox shared folders or a network share on the host that you map inside the guest. If the share points at a RAM FS volume, the writes stay in RAM and never touch your SSD, which I think is the real goal here.
Administrator rights
Not needed. By default any user can create and dismount volumes, so that isn't what's standing in your way. (An administrator can restrict it on a shared machine, but that's off by default.)
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Bob
Re: How to disable activity log 17 August 2026, 23:16 |