RAM disk not appearing in Windows PerfMon
3 posts · Closed
Newbie not seeing RAM disk in Windows PerfMon. Possibly because RAM disks live well above the HAL layer.
Goal: Use RAM disk for SQL Server 2014 Temp database for speed and to save my poor SSD drives. 20 to 50 MB transferred regularly as TempDB is hit hard.
Using: 30 day free RAM Disk 4.0.1 64-bit on Windows 10, post 1607 patch set, Intel i7 NUC with 32 GB memory. SOPHOS antivirus and a few programs. Non-gamer.
History: Testing out RAM disk. Everything works fine. Rebooted multiple times ensuring the system is solid. Created and dropped several RAM disks in tuning the system without issue. Biggest issue was Windows security and files not inheriting "full control" when moved from one drive to another.
Wanting: Should I see the RAM disk in Windows PerfMon? If not, how do I see which files are being hit hardest? Reads/writes, etc.
As far as I know, the Performance Monitor requires a disk to be a real hard disk with partitions, not a standalone volume.
The RAM Disk app can emulate that at the expense of minor overhead (usually under 5%). Just head to the RAM disk's properties and tick Hard Disk Emulation. Then it should show up in Perfmon:
[image: https://i.imgur.com/LlECIgj.png]
Thank you for the answer and quick response.
I saw the hard disk emulation part but did not make the connection. :) RTFM - words to live & work by.
So far RAM disk has been rock solid under normal and abnormal use (disk full, shrinking an active temp file in SQL server that uses the temp file for work, etc)