HyperDrive 4 – build a 32GB RamDisk

Posted on Dec 18, 07 09:47 AM PDT

The HyperDrive 4 is a hard-drive enclosure that takes standard memory modules instead of a disk drive. Your computer will treat it as a regular hard drive, as HyperDrive connects via a standard IDE disk connector. The HyperDrive 4 even has an external power-source to turn it into a non-volatile disk, even if ti doesn’t sound all that secure…

The advantage of having memory (RAM) instead of a disk is obvious: the absence of mechanical parts will reduce the latency and seek-time by a lot. Unlike flash-based SSDs, even the transfer speed is faster. You could use a 32GB (or less) RamDisk as the disk swapping place. In practice, I prefer the disk swap to spending the $5500 that this drive costs.

Anyhow, I know that this would *technically* qualify as a SSD drive (no moving parts), but I prefer to call it a RamDisk because it uses RAM memory, instead of flash. Secondly, the performance of HyperDrive 4 is well beyond a flash-based SSD, because flash is much slower than RAM…

Product page, full review

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