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There are two odd ball disks that can be used in Windows or DOS. These
are ram disks and substitute disks. A ram disk is in RAM memory for when
the computer is on. A substitute disk is a folder/directory on a regular disk
and can always be there.
Both of these disks are similar to real, regular disks. They can have files,
subdirectories, can be copied; they cannot be carried around. They are not
real. The ram disk is imaginary, the substitute disk is often called virtual.
A ram disk can easily be installed in a Windows PC computer. There are
instructions on how to do this in the MSDOSDRV.TXT file in the Windows
directory, from MicroSoft.
The ram disk needs some extra memory help, in terms of other resident
programs. These need to be specified in the config.sys file on the c: disk.
They need to be in a certain order, as they are interdependant and one
needs to be already loaded, in order for the next one to be loaded
correctly. The commands are in the table below.
Commands for RAM Disk
rem Have these three statements in the c:\config.sys file, rem in this order, at the start of the file. rem These statements will create a 1.5Mb ramdisk, able to rem have 64 files in its root directory. This ramdisk will rem reside in the computer's extended memory. rem device=c:\windows\himem.SYS device=c:\windows\emm386.EXE /ram device=c:\windows\ramdrive.SYS 1500 512 064 /e rem |
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There are other types of ram disks around. There are some
that work as disk caches, and some will construct a virtual memory from sections of the hard drive and RAM. Some have been improvised for Windows NT systems, that do not have them from MicroSoft. Here are a few of the sites where such ram disks are found: www.abcdrivers.com/eng/programas.asp?tipo=L < ABCDrivers www.ntl-uk.com/products/superdisk.htm < SuperDisk-NT - first NT RAM disk www.virtusoft.com/vramdir.htm < vRamDir 1.10 - dynamic 32-bit virtual RAM www.simtel.net/pub/msdos/ramdisk < MS-DOS / Memory resident disks |
Virtual, substitute disks are very easy to handle. One can find about them
under DOS, with the "subst /?" command. The SUBST instruction can be
entered, or be in the c:\AUTOEXEC.BAT file.
If only entered at the DOS prompt, the substitute disk will exist for only as
long as the computer is left running. The more permanent method is to
add the SUBST command instruction to the AUTOEXEC.BAT file in the root
directory of the hard drive, the c: disk.
An example:
This instruction makes an e: disk from the Windows
directory. It can be entered via the DOS prompt, or
be added to the commands in the c:\autoexec.bat
file, in the root directory of the hard disk.
SUBST E: C:\Windows
But any valid directory would do.