Macintosh Bible, 8th Edition, The

The RAM Disk

Another feature of the Memory control panel allows you to use a portion of main memory to create a RAM disk that is treated just like a hard drive (although it's much faster). Unless you have huge amounts of RAM installed, it can't substitute for a real hard drive; however, it can be useful in some situations, such as holding a Web browser's cache, which speeds up Web surfing. RAM disks on later Mac OS versions with modern Macs can retain their contents even when the computer is powered off. (The contents are written to the hard drive before shutting down and copied back when you start back up.) Remember that a RAM disk is not the safest place to put important files and documents—it's best used as fast temporary storage. Should your ...