Last Updated on December 6, 2015 by Dave Farquhar
Moving the rest of your temporary files to a ramdisk provides a number of performance benefits. Program installations proceed noticeably faster, and fewer files written to your system disk means less fragmentation, less maintenance for an SSD, and, most likely, longer SSD life.
I recommend you use Dataram’s load and save settings to make the disk persistent. Sometimes a program installation will need the temp files for a time after a reboot, and it’s much better to continue cleaning up temp files occasionally than it is to try to troubleshoot why a program installation keeps failing.
After setting up the ramdisk with Dataram’s setup utility, go to your Start menu, right click on Computer and select Properties. Click Advanced system settings, then click Environment Variables. You’ll find two user variables named TEMP and TMP. Click each, click Edit, and change them to R:\TEMP, substituting the drive letter of your ramdisk for R:. The settings take effect immediately, with no need to reboot.
The next time you install a program, installation will proceed noticeably faster. Save your downloads to the ramdisk and run them from there, and program installation will be even faster still.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.