Renoise + Ramdisk

Tips & Tricks
#1

Hello people,

I’ve just installed a RamDisk here on my PC (but it has only 256 MB of RAM), and I’ve created a 32 MB Ramdisk. The Windows were configured to use the TEMP dir from the RamDisk, then I started ReNoise.

My computer is very old and slow, but the RamDisk stuff I did here would be very useful to you that have a great machine. When editing samples, ReNoise was working at REAL TIME!!! This is because no HD acess is required; the temporary files were stored in the RamDisk. The problem for me is that when the 32 MB were fully used, ReNoise wasted my .xrns file and couldn’t save the file, so I lost the work. But for you that have +2GB of Ram, I recommend to make a 512 MB RamDisk. ReNoise works extremly fast!

STEPS FOR CREATING A RAMDISK:

  1. Download the free Gavotte RamDisk:
    http://www.techsnack.net/gavotte-ramdisk-f…virtual-hardisk
    Steps for the installation can be followed by this link.
  2. Set your machine default TEMP directory to R:\TEMP (if you wish to install the RamDisk as R: drive). Go to the Control Panel, then System, then Advanced Options, then “Ambient Variables” (This is the portuguese translation, I don’t know if english Windows uses this same term). Change the TEMP and TMP variables to R:\TEMP.
  3. Start ReNoise.
  4. Enjoy awesome editing speed!
#2

Sounds tasty!

D’you know if there is there a solution like this for Mac?

#3

this should be in the tips & tricks forum! Will look into what ramdisk exactly means before I install :slight_smile: but cheers for the heads up on this.

#4

wait a minute, Renoise doesn’t stream samples from the harddisk, it mostly uses ram right? So wouldn’t this be counterproductive? Maybe thats why you lost your song, because it is buggy.

#5

A RAM disks and caches are very old tricks to improve performance in MSDOS “good” old times. Nowadays is not needed anymore if you use modern systems. I don’t see the point of using a ramdisk unless your hard disk/operating system combo is really really slow.

#6

Renoise only uses temporary files when

  • creating / applying undo redo
  • loading / saving XRNS/XRNI files

so the gained speedup is not really that useful while “working” on songs…

Of course that crash when running out of temp space should never ever happen. You should get a warning that the file could not be saved. Let me check this again…