Questions and Suggestions

[RRTRACKS]

Being a novice with computers you will have to bear with me. First a suggestion: your documentation covers the use of your product quite well. However one is left to sift though the forum to find how to implement any application using your product. Adding a section to your documentation to cover this would be beneficial to both users and potential customers looking at your software. It is understood with the varying usage specific recommendations in this section would not be possible.

My desktop system currently consists of Windows 7 Home Premium, with 6GB of RAM (2GB were recently added). For some strange reason the available memory went from +/- 3GB to 2GB when I upgraded from Windows XP to 7. No hardware changes were made at the time of the upgrade. Otherwise the OS seems to work well. The lack of memory is what brought me to your product.

Following comments found on this forum, 4GB of IM was made available and split into two RAM drives. Page file allocation was set up on a 2GB I/O RAM disc. Readyboost was setup on a 2GB SCSI RAM disc. Both have been working well, and I have noticed a performance increase with the start up of the OS and various programs.

The following paging file allocation was setup with Regedit:

Z:\pagefile.sys 1000 2000
C:\pagefile.sys 20 1000

My Computer indicates Drive Z has 1 of 2GB free. Looking at Z’s directory a 1GB paging file was seen. Looking at the Task Manager – Under the System Section displayed by the Performance Tab only +/- 3000 MB were indicated next to the Commit item. This matches the lower limit setup with the paging file allocation. If the lower limit is changed to match the upper limit of 2000 and the computer is rebooted the Commit amount of memory changes to +/- 4000 MB.

Does the amount of memory on the Commit line in the Task Manager reflect a dynamic memory setting? What is a good value to use for the lower limit? Half of the maximum RAM allocated, 500 MB, or depending on use? If depending on use a single example would be helpful.

My use of the computer entails internet, MS office, desktop database development, high end gaming, and small amount of photo or graphic editing. In the near future I would expect to be developing some web based database applications using Alpha Software. What would be a general recommendation for a balance between the amounts of the 4GB of IM assigned to Readyboast and paging files?

I have seen some mention of using Vsuite Ramdisk for facilitating the use of hibernation. Could you provide a link or some comments on how this works and if it would be practical for home use? What if any other use of Vsuite Ramdisk with other programs or Windows resources would benefit overall computer performance? What if any features offered by the professional edition would be useful for home use?
Shortly I will be purchasing the Standard Edition, but am open to reasons for purchasing the Professional Edition.

One last thought before going. For some strange reason almost all forums provided by companies, including yours, lack a link (That can be easily be found) to their own home page. All these forums have company logos at the top, but do not link to the company home page as expected. All the home pages of the companies have links to their forums though.

Thanks,

Rich

[Support]

Hi Rich,

Thank you very much for your kind feedback!

The term "Commit" in the Task Manager is to describe the pagefile-backed virtual address space. Roughly speaking, the maximum of the commit charge equals the total physical memory (OS visible) plus the total pagefile size (current).

You can trace the usage of pagefile via performance monitor (control panel->administrative tools->Performance Monitor->Add Counter ->Paging file). Then you can determine the pagefile size according to the usage.

Please note that because you place the pagefile on IM range, you shall disable computer entering into hibernation state, otherwise the computer may hang/BSOD when resuming from hibernation. refer to the "IMPORTANCE" section (point 4) at
http://www.romexsoftware.com/main/suppo ... g-ram.html

The Pro Edition of VSuite Ramdisk adds more features to Image File support compared to the Standard Edition. So I don't think you need the pro edition currently, if you don't use Image File. Regarding Image File, please refer to http://www.romexsoftware.com/main/suppo ... -file.html

Regarding the examples of using our product, yes, we have planned to add them. But because we still have some features to develop and there are varying usage as you know, this section is still under preparation.

Regarding the last question on forum link-back, this forum is powered by phpBB (http://www.phpbb.com/), we don't change it too much. I think we have a link back to the homepage. (In the second frame, there is a link called "Romex Software Website")

Hope these help.
Thank you again.

[RRTRACKS]

Thank you for all the information and getting back to me so quickly.

The instructions you gave for monitoring pagefile usage were for Windows XP. I take it this is what you recommend looking at to determine how to allocate the page file memory. If it is not too much trouble would you please list the instructions for how to get this information from Windows 7?

Thanks Again,

Rich

[Support]

Hi,

It is almost same as that on winxp. I attached 2 screenshots to explain how to view it.
step 1.
goto control panel ->control panel->administrative tools->Performance Monitor

perfm_pagefile_1.png (33.34 KiB) Viewed 41809 times

step 2.
select "Performance Monitor" in the left bar, and then click "Add Counter" ( Icon "+")
step 3

perfm_pagefile_2.png (45.34 KiB) Viewed 41809 times

find the "Paging file" item, and select needed items, then click "Add >>" button.

click ok.

Hope it helps.

[RRTRACKS]

Thanks again for the timely and helpful reply. I just purchased the standard version.

All the Best,

Rich

[RRTRACKS]

Since the post above, I reallocated the 2 GB portion of IM (Invisible Memory) originally setup as a SCSI Disk for Readyboost. This allocated memory was reconfigured as I/O RAM disc and added to the 2 GB already setup for OS virtual memory (paging file).

It does not appear using RAM made available by “Vsuite Ram Disc” software for Readyboost would have much benefit (for my use) as all the cached files are lost every time the computer is shut down. Buying a flash drive for Readyboost, as I have since done, in my case from both a cost and performance perspective is a better option. A couple of observations as a novice in this area follow.

USB flash drives and SD memory cards both use a FAT32 file format, therefore; 4GB is the maximum drive size you can use for Readyboost with such a device. In testing it was found that you could have three (No idea what the maximum number would be) 4GB drives installed for Readyboost at the same time.

Speed tests on the drives I used produced the following read speed results (in MB/Sec): Ativa 8GB Flash drive 4.2, SanDisk 8GB Class 6 SD Card 5.4, SanDisk 8GB Flash drive 6.8 and the 800 MHz Ram using Vsuite Ram was the winner with 260.7. The SD card was tested in a cheap USB thumb drive and I am not sure if using a decent card reader would produce better results. Information on how these speed tests on ReadyBoost drives were done can be found at the following link: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/is-your- ... yboost/186 . It is worth noting that there are several types of drive speed tests for read speed with greatly varying results that can be done.

Some concern has been voiced about using flash drives for computer use as the number read/write cycles is limited. For Readyboost I doubt this should be a concern as Microsoft recommends these drives for this purpose, the number of read/write cycles for this application is probably limited, and flash drives are relatively cheap and easy to replace should you burn one out.

Using Vsuite Ram Disc software to setup a RAM drive for Readyboost might be very beneficial in a computer used as a server that is rarely shutdown. If tech support wants to correct any inaccuracies presented here, please do. Also it would be appreciated if additional comments on the subject could be provided.

Thanks,

Rich

[Support]

Thank you very much for your test and feedback!

Regarding the ReadyBoost on ramdisks, yes, it's a problem that all the cached files are lost every time the computer is shut down...As you said, it is effective only for the current run time.

[GeorgeNini]

Maybe you could remove the "History" link put it as a sticky in the Classic Mini forum.

Also, maybe remove the "Questions/Concerns about the "New and Improved" SSM" forum and move the topics to "Website Information, Features, and Questions"?