How to create a RAM drive in macOS Ventura?
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How to create a RAM drive (a.k.a. RAM disk) in macOS Ventura ?
The Apple App Store lists only a single app for creating a RAM drive. And apparently that app does not actually work, per review comments.
For the curious… Reasons to use a RAM drive include:
- Avoid needlessly wearing out storage device, whether solid-state or spinning-rust .
- Avoid polluting a continuous back-up mechanism, such as Time Machine on macOS , with multiple copies of rewritten files that we'll never need.
- Avoid delays waiting for writes-to-storage to complete. RAM is *much* faster than storage, even solid-state storage (“SSD”).
These problems are more acute for people developing and/or testing software.
Modern file systems perform smart caching in RAM. However, this does not mitigate the problems in the above bullet-list.
Asked by Basil Bourque
(13982 rep)
Jul 9, 2023, 12:01 AM
Last activity: Jul 14, 2025, 05:38 PM
Last activity: Jul 14, 2025, 05:38 PM