Windows 95 and 98 can use the MSDOS Ramdrive or the Franck Uberto Ramdisk. Since these RAMDISK's are FAT16 type, they can run DOS applications including Double Space/Drive Space. That can be a big advantage if you are running a FAT32 drive and need to open a compressed file on it. Provided you have enough RAM Memory to create a RAMDISK big enough to hold the file, you can open the file without having a FAT16 partition on your computer.

      I have installed Windows 95b to a Ramdisk, then PKZIPPED it. This can be loaded and run on a computer with or without a Hard disk. My primary use for this is that I can access and copy Long Filename files on a computer where Windows fails to start. I use PKZIP to store the files I want. I can restore my Windows and all the programs from a CDRW disk. The only thing I have to do is the SYSTEM transfer to make the drive bootable.

      My latest version is for computers with a lot of RAM. This method allows you to put Windows 95 or Windows 98 on a DriceSpace Compressed file. While you normally have this on a hard drive, this file can be copied to a CDROM. The computer can be booted without a hard drive, the compressed file copied to a large Ramdisk, then Windows launched. It runs faster and you can load quite a few programs on a large Ramdisk. With a 700mb CD you can create a CVF with a reported capacity of around 1.5gb. Since you can run without a hard drive, there is no risk of attack by viruses. This could be done with only about 800mb of total RAM. See Ramdrive 98 to learn how to create and use that.

      There are many backup programs. Some like Symantec/Norton's Ghost copy the whole partition. But you can't access just one file. The ZIP files I create can be accessed by PKWARE programs, Winzip, and some other programs. You can retrieve a single file from the ZIP file.

      The Windows 95 on the Ramdrive Booted in about 2 seconds on a Ramdisk. This was a stripped version. The same boot took about 10 seconds on a hard drive. If you had Windows operation on a Ramdisk, you could still use programs installed to the hard drive. I have not gone far with this yet. So I don't know what benefits there might be.

      The Franck Uberto Ramdisk was the choice for this experiment as it has the capacity to create ramdrives larger than 32mb (which MS-DOS cannot) and you can assign a drive letter (which MS-DOS cannot). I assigned letter R (for Ramdisk) for the installation.