Anybody have a virtual Windows XP in RAM disk?

How much memory does it take to run just XP and the VM program? I'm thinking about this and have around 6.5GB of RAM I could dedicate as a dynamic drive location through Virtualbox. Would this be enough?

 

You know the speed u gain would be stained by having to load the image from the HDD to the ram and back each time u were done or wanted to start it.

If the VM supports the location you give for the drive then yea XP will fit fine in the amount of space. Give it 4G and keep the rest to urself u need ram for the vm to give xp as well.

 

I am sure I had a 10GB HDD with an XP installation with some additional stuff so 6.5GB is enough for a base installation. I think it is around 3-4.

But why do that ? XP(any OS for that matter) seldom bang the HDD if you give it enough RAM(which can be assigned in virtualbox). That seems to be a better use of RAM. Unless you don't want to leave a trace of it thus the RAM disk.

 

chimp according to wikipedia it was like 1.5 to 1.8 depending. I have personally experienced about 1.5 since it mentioned it. Never actually tried to go for minimal though.

EDIT - Closer look, service packs are what do it so yeah upwards of 4+ if your on SP3. Id strip a SP2 install and be happy with it unless u need to be updated. Though the source they give doesnt agree with the 1.8GB extra they say for SP2 eitherway if you deleted the system restore files if its post install or just do it from a SP2 or SP3 disk it should be alot less space.

 

Oh, my memory is failing then. The reason I mention 3-4 is that I have a virtualbox VHD which I cannot fit on a 4GB USB. That however is after I have applied SP3 and may also contains page file or like that.

 

Thats actually a good one, the page file could be a serious issue for size. Would definitly see what nLite can do for the install.... never thought about it like this. I doubt it would create a hibernation file but if it tried thats another thing to prevent. Not sure what you want todo about the page file but keep the ram small will keep the file small or you can make it smaller.

 

I can disable the page file, I think I just forgot. Page file and hibernation take most of XP's disk space.

 

Thank you for the replies. I'm not so much trying to save hdd space as I am trying to find a use for the 8GB of RAM I have. Photoshop & Linux don't play well together and I need PS for work so I still need to keep Windows around.

I'm thinking of opening an XP disc in nLite and stripping out nearly everything. I don't even need internet connection in this, nothing other than what runs the OS and font library. I'm using around 1GB of RAM as of now with no swap/pagefile so if an extra 3-5 GB is set aside for virtual XP, I wouldn't mind at all.