[How to Guide] Eliminate HDD access during normal windows usage (advanced)

Hey guys, I would like to share some tweakings that I find extremely useful to significantly reduce HDD activities during normal use. My HDD light almost never comes on after these tweaking. My WD 7200 320GB scorpio black runs much cooler and I see an improved battery life.

Remember these tweakings might be a bit advanced for some users. And this guide is only DRAFT #1. I will edit it to clarify as questions come up

Bofore I start, I assume you already know the usual tweakings (disable indexing, disable system restore). If not, do those first. NBR has many posts about them

Disclaimer

The tweaking involves using Ramdisk. Therefore all data stored onto Ramdisk will be LOST if you have an accidental power loss or blue screen reboot. You must use Ramdisk PLUS, which offers the option to save the Ramdisk image to HDD at windows shutdown. As long as you shut windows properly for the 1st time after you run through the tweakings, they will stay forever.


Now lets start my tweakings


Hardware/Software needed

1. 3GB+ Ram
2. Ramdisk plus (you might have to buy it)
3. Junction.exe (downloadable from Microsoft)
4. Procmon.exe (downloadable from Microsoft)
5. 30minutes + brave heart

Step 1

Use Ram Disk plus to create a 400MB ram disk.

Make sure, under settings, you click both options "Save at system shutdown" and "Reserve space for full disk".

I assigned my Ram disk drive to R: and will use R: in the following instructions.

I find dedicating 400MB to ramdisk is not such a big deal for 3GB+ systems on vista. You can get by with 200MB ramdisk but there is a risk you run out of space on ramdisk. It is extremely painful to recreate a ramdisk. There are no way to resize it once you find it is too small


Step 2

Use Procmon.exe to analyze which programs, which files, or which directories access file systems frequently.

For me, they are the following, probably similar to you too

a. Firefox and its cache
b. IE and its cache
c. AVG antivirus log files (by the way, great free antivirus, thanks to NBR)
d. Google chrome and its caches



Step 3

For the firefox,

(1) Install it to the Ramdisk drive (Uninstaill first it if you have already installed it)

(2) Open the desktop/quick launch shortcut to firefox.exe (right click->properties

(3) Attach “ –profilemanager” to Target

(4) So the complete command is "R:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox" –profilemanager

(5) Save this modified shortcut and then Double click it. It should prompt you to create a new profile

(6) When you create a new profile, make sure you “Choose folder” and place the profile anywhere on the Ramdisk Drive. For example, my chosen directory is R:\FirefoxProfile

(7) Finish the profile creation

(8) Close firefox, change the shortcut back to its original format without the “-profilemanager” attached to end

(9) Install your favorite Firefox addons as usual



Step 4

For IE,

The process is much simpler.

Just start it, go to tools->internet options->Browser history->Settings-> Move folder to the Ramdisk drive root directory.

Windows will ask you to log out first and just do as told.

The final directory for IE will be R:\Temporary Internet Files


Step 5

For AVG antivirus. It is a great FREE software but it fragments HDD too much with its logs. So after some studies, I came up with this tweaking.

All frequently modified log files are located in C:\ProgramData\avg8\Log

However this log folder is being exclusively accessed by the antivirus software

So you have to

(1) Boot to Windows SAFE MODE

(2) DELETE the” log” folder under “avg8” folder. Don’t worry about the files inside. They will be recreated automatically without any damaged.

(3) Create a folder named “Temp” in the Ramdisk drive root directory (For me, it would be R:\Temp)

(4) Create a folder named “Avg8log” inside the “Temp” folder created above (For me, it would be R:\Temp\Avg8log)

(5) Place the junction.exe to your desktop

(6) Run CMD by go to start menu->Run and type cmd and hit Enter. In CMD, type in the following command (remember to replace xxx with your username)

C:\Users\xxx\Desktop\ Junction.exe "C:\ProgramData\avg8\Log" "R:\Temp\Avg8log"

(7) To check result, go to C:\ProgramData\avg8, you should see a shortcut folder “log”.

The folder icon should have the shortcut arrow at the lower left corner. If you see this folder, it means you junctioned it successfully

(8) If you don’t use Google Chrome, just restart Windows and you are done. Ignore step 6


Step 6

If you do use Google chrome, do the following similar to Step 5 above.

By the way, I think Google Chrome is a very fast browser. I use it as frequently as Firefox now.

For Google Chrome, the mostly accessed/fragmented folder is

C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default

So

(1) Install Google Chrome if you have not done so.

(2) Boot to Windows SAFE MODE if you have not done so

(3) DELETE the” Default” folder under “User Data” folder. There should be NO SUCH folder as

C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default

(3) No need to create “Temp” in the Ramdisk drive root directory, since it was created also for AVG log in Step 5 above

(4) Create a folder named “ChromeDefault” under the “Temp” folder. For me, it would be R:\Temp\ChromeDefault)

(5) Place the junction.exe to your desktop and run CMD by go to start menu->Run and type cmd and hit Enter.

In CMD, type in the following command (remember to replace xxx with your username)

C:\Users\xxx\Desktop\junction "C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default" "R:\Temp\ChromeDefault"

(6) To check result, go to C :\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data, you should now see a shortcut folder “Default”.

The folder icon should have the shortcut arrow at the lower left corner. If you see this folder, it means you junctioned it successfully

(7) Restart windows into normal mode

(8) Start Google chrome and go to menu -> Options->Under the hood->Enable phishing and malware protection…. UNCHECK IT because this feature will gradually create a huge database on your HDD and hundreds of fragments. It is not useful if you have a good antivirus, such as AVG.



I am only giving instructions for the above 4 softwares. If you use others, please explore by yourself. It should be rather similar. Of course, I will try to reply to your questions when I get a chance.


Now enjoy your new hardly blinked HDD and much cooler palm rest area.

PS. I find Vista superfetch very useful and does not increase HDD activities, except for the first few minutes upon bootup. But do turn off the SIdebar feature please, this tool accesses HDD frequently

 

Come on... did anyone give it a try? I am pretty sure my draft guide might not be straightforward to follow. If nobody leaves any comments, I don't know how improve the guide.

These tweakings reduced the temperature of my WD 7200 320 GB HDD by 2~4 degree C. My Lenovo T400's right palm area is much cooler now. And I get at least 30min extra battery life now.

 

I think the guide is simple enough to follow, but I have no reason to do this so I can't offer any insight on results/ramifications. I think most people here will not try this either, but you may get a few takers.

 

I would recommend adding links to the required software(only trials)

 

first, thx amphibia for starting this thread. i love Chrome and am just starting to tinker with Ramdisk, so i was happy to see your thread.

i also found another no-fuss way to do it over at the eeeUser forum.

basically, you can right click on the icon, and add the following to the end of the target statement:

-user-data-dir="R:\Temp" -start-maximized

i exported my Chrome bookmarks first, then applied the string. obviously, you'd change the drive letter to match your own, and same goes for the folder name/location. light it up, import your bookmarks and you should be good to go. worked here anyway.

thanks again

take care -

omni

 

Interesting idea. It's funny to see virtual/RAM disks coming back into fashion; I recall setting up RAM disks on my IBM PC luggable back in 1986 when I was a freshman in an engineering program. It was a bit of a tighter fit, then, given that max RAM was 640KB.