When Apple Computer, Inc. (now Apple, Inc.) introduced System 7 nearly 15 years ago, one of the newest things was Virtual Memory. This control panel allows the user to allocate hard disk space to the system so that it can be used as if it were RAM. Another new feature was RAM Disk. It’s a control panel function which allows the user to allocate part of RAM so that it can be used as a virtual disk. Those days, I put Norton Utilities’ Disk Doctor and Speed Disk with a tiny system in RAM Disk to quickly fix disk problems and then perform defragmentation. Under System 9.1, one could not start up a system from RAM Disk any more. Also, Apple incorporated Virtual Memory and RAM Disk into a single control panel called Memory in System 9. (See Screenshot 01.)

So what happened to RAM Disk under OS X? When I eventually switched to OS X several years ago, I was disappointed to know that the new system didn’t support RAM Disk. But there are several freeware and shareware titles that let you create a virtual disk out of RAM. One such Mac freeware title is Esp�rance DV (hereafter, Esperance DV) by Michael Parrot. Esperance DV is a mere PreferencePane, which is accessible by System Preferences. (See Screenshot 02.) Unfortunately, it hasn’t been updated since June, 2006. Perhaps, it doesn’t require an update. Anyway, we don’t know if Esperance DV runs under 10.5 Leopard. What else is available? And we’ve found Ram Disk Utility Pro. Continue reading →