Question on ramdrives
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OK, not sure if this is exactly possible, but...
since windows xp allows you to chage the default location for users accounts, eg. changing it from "c:\documents and settings\" to "x:\", I'm basically wondering if ianyone knows anyway possible to do this in such a way that its loading the account settings from a ramdrive that is either loaded from an image on hd or loads a copy of a directory from hd?
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There are RAMDisk drivers that will load an image at startup and save it at shutdown but all your users risk loosing their data if the PC crashes, especially if the crash occurs *while* the ram disk is being written to HD. On a side note, how do you relocate C:\Documents and Settings, the only way I could find was an un-attended install script, is there an easier way?
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You can modify it in the registry too -> HKLM\Software\Micrsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
Just be careful.
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It's not very intuitive, but on XP right click on full My Documents icon (Desktop on classic, in start menu in XP them) and go to properties. There will be a move option to migrate all the files to a new location.
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@piptheGeek said:
On a side note, how do you relocate C:\Documents and Settings,
BillCo hasn't seen fit to release one for Vista yet, but the TweakUI power toy for XP and previous let you relocate all of the 'special' folders, like Docs&Settings to arbitrary locations.
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Well I managed to get this working quite well in a virtual machine. Only account that needs to be loaded from the ramdisk is the main user account, all ather accounts can be left in the default folder.
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I knew about properties of My Documents, it was how to move the entire Documents and Settings folder that I was after (HKLM\Software\Micrsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList). Is it right that the value doesn't exist by default? I had tried searching the registry for "C:\Documents and Settings", if it doesn't exist unless it has been changed, would explain why I never found it. :)
Hitsuji, what was your reason for wanting to use the RAM disk?
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@piptheGeek said:
Hitsuji, what was your reason for wanting to use the RAM disk?
Possibly slow drive access, or since ram is volatile memory me might want everything to be gone by reboot.
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@piptheGeek said:
Hitsuji, what was your reason for wanting to use the RAM disk?
Em, XP install on an Asus eeePC. 4GB drive, so need to make sure min space is used. Plus it's on a Solid State Disk, which is atm undetermined as to whether there is hardware wear-leveling involved or not, or even what the endurance of these chips are like.
So far it's just been speculation since these devices are so new and many of the more 1337 users have bastardised a lot of open information about these Solid State Drive to such an extent that all the information that can easily be found on the net on the eeepc nand drive is and its endurance is based on modern Solid State Drives, which for 16GB retails for around 300EUR and Asus purchase thier Solid State Drive from manufacturers for approx 15USD for 16GB, so somehow I don't think the Asus drives have the nice long lifespan that everyone is thinking. And since windows doesn't have any built in software wear-leveling I guess I should do as much as possible to help myself. Especially when asus has done as much as they can to reduce this with thier default linux OS by implementing Ext2 as the base filesystem over Ext3, and mounting many of the var directories as tmpfs.
I cant afford to just wait and see if the drive dies and try to hand it back for repairs, since my warranty will be voided as soon as I make my hardware modifications.
@piptheGeek said:
I knew about properties of My Documents, it was how to move the entire Documents and Settings folder that I was after (HKLM\Software\Micrsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList). Is it right that the value doesn't exist by default? I had tried searching the registry for "C:\Documents and Settings", if it doesn't exist unless it has been changed, would explain why I never found it. :)
The value should exist from installation. For every account that is made windows looks here first to see where to store it. However, it will be stored by default as %SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings .
Once an account is created and logged into, the directoy is then created and a reference is created to its location in the registry under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\(random string usually begining in S-1-5-) These have subkeys with values such as %SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings\LocalService point to each accounts individual directory. These also need to be modifed if your moving any of the accounts that have already been created.
