I am really doubt for it.  Ramdisk should only be created after booting into windows.  Contents in ramdisk would be vanished after pc shutdown.

Also look at the EWF filter the folks over at Aspireoneuser are talking about. Install the OS and your apps as per normal, and it will read from the SSD no problem, but all writes are stored in RAM until they are either committed to drive, or the computer is restarted and they are lost.

http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/view … t&sd=a

Turionaltec wrote:

Also look at the EWF filter the folks over at Aspireoneuser are talking about. Install the OS and your apps as per normal, and it will read from the SSD no problem, but all writes are stored in RAM until they are either committed to drive, or the computer is restarted and they are lost.

http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/view … t&sd=a

Thanks for the pointer Turionaltec, I hadn't seen that one before. I'll take a look at it in more detail.

Molly wrote:

get Puppy, it's designed to run entirely from the system memory and will put all your fears for the SSD to an end

I have an idea, how about some unmods? We could remove the SSD

I find it funny when people are so fearful about wearing out the SSD that they don't use it at all. Well then, what's the point?

MeowR- wrote:

/agree
IMO, by the time your SSD is worn out, your Eee PC will be well outdated and you'll need a new PC anyhow.

Well, that is what the manufacturers say, but you can't be sure. What they give you are average lifetime values. You might have a SSD that lasts for years, or you could end up with one that fails after a year and a half. I used the Sysinternals Filemon utility to monitor windows writes, specifically on system files, and there are literally hundreds to thousands of writes fo the SSD every minute, just when sitting idle.

There is also the performance issue to consider, which is more important to me personally. The whole idea is not to eliminate writing to the SSD, but to take the performance degradation casued by writing to the SSD and eliminate it. I would still have the OS writing to the SSD, but as a background process, and either on a schedule or by manually selecting a "backup" to the SSD (e.g. just before shutting down). There will be a lot less writes to the SSD, and the performance should be dramatically better during normal use.

Speed Up & WriteProtect WindowsXP by Embedding for a Long SSD Life

First, the warning...I cant over-emphasize so much the importance of doing an imaging of your system first as any lost data, time, jobs, relationships and self-confidence is the sole responsibility of the experimenter. He he
Other warnings: http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php? … 83#p401483

We need to embedd Windows XP by using Enhanced Write Filter-EWF-to speed up and protect us from file corruption.

Embedding or the making use of ewf <Enhanced Write Filter> redirects writes that would usually go to your hard drive to RAM. By reducing the number of writes, you can make solid state drives or any type of flash drives last longer. As we all know, flash based memory drives or cards, SSD, MMC, CF or sd card, thumbdrives have limited number of write cycle capacity.

So let's say, you make a file or install a program and write filter is enabled in that particular partition you protected, if you save that file on that protected partition since all writes will go to this RAM overlay, it is gone the moment the power is gone. That is essentially what is embedding. You make your partition write protected. Very much like cdrom <read only> like linux live cd. But, if you save that file on another partition which is not protected by ewf. Then, it will be saved to that unprotected partition. If you make an installation of new programs or games, save various files, made configuration changes, tweakings, etc... to make those changes imprint on your drive or partition, just disable the write protection. Again if you have downloaded and installed a suspected malware or spyware with ewf enabled, then it is gone the moment the power is gone. So, that's the beauty of it. And since everything is in RAM much like a ramdrive, it is faster than that of the spinning hard drive. Therefore, our operating system, the opening of files and folders and apllications will be faster and snappier. Also the booting time is greatly decreased esp. if minlogon is also installed besides ewf.

Thus, you can make your operating system LIGHTNING FAST despite the modest specs of your system, especially if you also the do the supertweaks http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/supertweaks.htm and http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=37047&p=1 i.e. killing prefetching, disabling unneeded services like indexing etc... http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm , removing system restore, hibernation and paging files, disabling write behind disk caching<impt.for FAT32>, reducing journalling<NTFS> like thumbnail caching, disabling timestamp for last access to a file, disabling the NTFS Change Journal etc...


THE TRIED AND TEST MANUAL METHOD:
1>Where to find the XP Embedded files for EWF, MinLogon, FBWF, etc
http://granturing.blogspot.com/2007/12/ … r-ewf.html
2>OPTIONAL:Installing MinLogon
http://granturing.blogspot.com/2006/09/ … logon.html
3>Installing EWF
http://granturing.blogspot.com/2007/12/ … l-ewf.html
Note:
a>disable windows file protection using xplite free trial
http://www.litepc.com/download/xplitetr … _trial.zip
b>delete bootstat.dat as instructed


SIMPLIFIED SEMI-AUTOMATED METHOD OF INSTALLING EWF:

1> download EWFtool from here http://www.btinternet.com/~danieldsmith … 0_BETA.zip . Use winrar to unzip the file you downloaded http://www.rarlab.com/rar/wrar371.exe
2> disable windows file protection using xplite free trial
http://www.litepc.com/download/xplitetr … _trial.zip
run xplite, then go to windows file protection tab, then click disabled. Go to C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache and remove or delete all the contents of that folder dllcache. Delete also the ‘bootstat.dat’ file under the Windows directory. You can reenable windows file protection later on...
3> at the same folder or directory as the downloaded EWFtool.exe, place ewf.sys, ewfmgr.exe, ewfntldr <these files you can get from me but first PM me or follow downloading instructions from here  >> http://granturing.blogspot.com/
4> double click EWFtool.exe, click Minimize diskwrites then click Install EWF support, also click <other ways to increase performance and reduce diskwrites>
   
Important:Before you do so, make sure you disable the Paging File by right-clicking on ‘My Computer’, clicking the ‘Advanced’ tab, clicking the ‘Performance’ button, clicking the ‘Change’ button in the ‘Virtual memory’ section, and selecting ‘No paging file’. You’ll also want to disable System Restore, again by right-clicking on ‘My Computer’, selecting the ‘System Restore’ tab, and checking ‘Turn off System Restore’.
    One bug is that booting with EWF, XP always brings up the recovery options at boot up. We can disable this by deleting the ‘bootstat.dat’ file under the Windows directory.

Here are two important commands to remember:

ewfmgr c: -commitanddisable –live
This will immediately disable EWF and commit all changes to the volume.

ewfmgr c: -enable
This will enable EWF on the next boot up.

The typical process for making persistent changes to your volume is to run the commitanddisable command, make your changes, run the enable command, and restart.

To simpliy the above process, create a batch file to disable and another batch file to enable ewf:

Open notepad or right click at desktop then create new text document file, edit or type 'ewfmgr c: -commitanddisable –live' without quotes, then
'save as' textfile in desktop named as 'disable', then rename it by right clicking the text document file saved at desktop then select 'rename', retype to 'disable.bat' without quotes.
Likewise for enable, type or edit 'ewfmgr c: -enable' without quotes, then
'save as' text document file in desktop named as 'enable', then rename it by right clicking the text document file saved at desktop then select 'rename', retype to 'enable.bat' without quotes.

So whenever you want to enable or disable, just doubleclick the corresponding batchfile you saved at your desktop.

The default partition protected is the C: drive. To change the partition to be protected...
Start>Run... type regedit. press enter. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ewf\Parameters\Protected\Volume0
double click ArcName, edit the partition, with 1 as the first partition, 2 the next...

OPTIONAL: SPEEDING UP BOOTING: INSTALLING MINLOGON THE SAFER WAY

Download minlogon.exe here http://thuun.boot-land.net/pub/pebldr-p … nlogon.cab . Extract/unzip minlogon.cab using winrar http://www.rarlab.com/rar/wrar371.exe . As well as download minlogon.reg by right-clicking this download link http://victor8314.myweb.hinet.net/pcuse … nlogon.reg then select 'save link as' or 'save target as' to the desired destination folder for e.g. desktop.

1.   Disable first ewf as described above if you have already installed it. Disable windows file protection using xplite free trial
http://www.litepc.com/download/xplitetr … _trial.zip
run xplite, then go to windows file protection tab, then click disabled. Go to C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache and remove or delete all the contents of that folder dllcache, if they are still there. You can reenable windows file protection later on...
2.   Then, go to your Windows\System32 directory and rename the file winlogon.exe to winlogon.exe.bak.
3.   Copy the minlogon.exe file to the Windows\System32 directory renaming it winlogon.exe.
4.   Double click the downloaded minlogon.reg to merge it into the registry.
5.   Reboot the system.

As long as you entered everything properly the system will boot into XP using the System account. The first time you boot up it’ll prepare the user settings for the System account so it’ll take a bit longer than usual. Once that is done, go ahead and reboot again to make sure everything is working properly. If you find that it doesn’t fit your needs then just restore the original WinLogon.

Note: Do back up with an imaging program using preferably on a recovery cd like acronis true image
OR Live Windows USB's or BartPE's Drivesnaphot imaging program
Please, make sure you can restore successfully by testing it first.

Even multiple drives or partitions can be protected such as your MMC or SD card or usb thumbdrives together with your SSD, by configuring multiple EWF volumes as described here http://granturing.blogspot.com/

ACPI stand by and hibernate do not work on removable drives unfortunately. Also, Hibernate Once Resume Many feature or HORM for short <the one which could make your windows boot up in a snap aside from minlogon>, there is a problem of ACPI lock up on removable drives. In my case I dont use HORM because my nlited windows is already snappy with minlogon and ewf.

Therefore, the solution is convert it to fixed drive by the use of Hitachi microdrive filter or use Lexar BootIt utility which is able to flip removable media bit in order to physically transform some UFDs as Fixed Disks<if you are lucky>
>>> http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=21850

Search the forum http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/ as others have figure it out the problem of ACPI.

This is not only useful in very specialized situations and would be practical even  for a regular desktop system not just the very obvious of making your ssd immortal...he he. Imagine surfing the net like a breeze as if your whole system is in ramdisk drive in fact your whole system works in this ram overlay. Protections from trojans and malwares: you can test install known malwares containing softwares without getting affected just like in vista's steady state or making use of virtual machine or deepfreeze. You can still save your work in another partition not protected and of course you can make persistent changes to the protected partition/s with your tweakings, customizations, and new program installations etc. by disabling the enhanced write filter.

These can make your system lightning fast and when you compare your tweaked system to the default xandros, you'll find even the latter very slow.

Last edited by trismegistos (2008-10-18 11:03:56 pm)

Turionaltec wrote:

Couple points:
-Can't reiterate the importance of a backup. While playing with ewf I got a BSOD on boot which I was able to get out of by loading "last good configuration". Alternatively booting in with a bootdisk and deleting ewf.sys might help you, or removing the refrences with an offline registry editor.

-Regardless of the amount of system RAM ewf will cause the system to crash after caching ~512MB. You can check how much is being cached by typing "ewfmgr c:"

For this reason I don't recommend using it on standard PCs with hard drives. Steady state, Returnil, and the like are better suited.

If you type "ewfmgr c: -commit" It will commit the changes at shutdown, and ewf will be enabled at startup. Place this command in your startup folder if you wish to always save changes. "ewfmgr c: -nocmd" will cancel a previously issued -commit so changes will be lost at shutdown.

I tried minlogon but didn't gain substantial boot time. I did however lose the ability to lock the machine and MS networking.

Thanks for the input and the alternative options suggested.

That's a very good warning indeed to everybody. Your statements are very right. This is not for everybody but for the hobbyists or enthusiasts.

I have experienced the same problem that's why I monitor my memory usage. I dont do extensive memory depleting tasks when this is enabled. To do that I have to disable.

This is experimental and not supported of course, the experimenter is on his own. That's why he has to devote the experimenting to another partition, or another machine. If he's sure he can live with the following limitations enumerated, good for him, he'll be working in a lightning fast live cd effect environment.

Thanks.

Last edited by trismegistos (2008-10-06 9:32:41 pm)

BOO HOO!!! are you planning on passing this down to your grandchildren?!?!
let it wear a little... better off setting ur page/temp files to a cheap sd card or killing it alltogether...

shiv666 wrote:

BOO HOO!!! are you planning on passing this down to your grandchildren?!?!
let it wear a little... better off setting ur page/temp files to a cheap sd card or killing it alltogether...

Let me enlighten...

First and foremost, longevity of the ssd drive is not my major consideration in implementing ewf. Security, stability, speed and privacy are my main concerns.

Does embedded operating system and/or live cd ring a bell to you? <to the hacktivist, though I'm not one, livecd is very usefull, because no logging or journalling that could point to their activities will be done>

This embedding of windows originated from carpc enthusiast in order to create a stable system for a very mobile environment.

My goal as I've said is to have a stable speedy secure and portable operating system, and embedding windows is just one of the steps to achieve that.

By embedding, you have a greater freedom better than that of making use of virtual machine or a sandboxed environment. Imagine you can download, install and test and malware-ridden softwares and never get affected. So that's deliberately not practicing safe hex. Isn't that liberating. He he

You dont even need to use ramdisk to speed up your system using ewf. And no need for ccleaner to clean out the crappy thrash, temporary files like index.dat.

I have hardened my system by using secure it, safexp, wwdc, seconfig and by following this...
http://www.markusjansson.net/exp.html

FYI, my system is never updated even my firewall and my antivirus are never updated. No phoning home even for windows' own processes, scriptblocking and disabling inline frames by browser and/or firewall.
But never had any infections from malwares ever since. Just singling out the roots of the problem and never anymore relying on symptomatic approach i.e. endless senseless updates of superficial patching instead of cure.
No more need for very sluggish bloatwares-security suites like Host intrusion detection systems and antispywares...

Like you, I've also done the tweaks to speed up my system like disabling or removing unneeded services...

I have managed to make my operating system portable generic and universal to a wide variety of systems or to any computers by implementing this...
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php? … opic=21895

Last edited by trismegistos (2008-10-25 8:40:24 am)

Its was a £250 machine when it came out, not many note/netbooks start at that price, we aren't really expecting to see top of the range components that last as long as the queen mother in this machine are we. I expect my eeepc's SSD will last another 3.5 - 5 years, ive already installed 2 full versions Of XP, and countless nlited ones on my little machine.

clarodina wrote:

Anyone tried using fbwf on xp and boot from read only media? Receive a BSOD when tried this. Since fbwf redirect to ram write so why BSOD? What is causing the boot fail? Boot on usual hardrive has no problem.

When you say boot from read only media, do you mean like a CD-ROM or a locked SD card? If so, how are you creating the bootable media? If you are simply taking an installed copy from a hard drive, and copying it over to a CD or SD card, it won't work, because in many places in the windows configuration it refers to the installation location by device name and location {eg:multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)}. As the SD card, or CD drive would be a completely different device than the hard drive it's looking for, it will fail.

As well if you make the bootable media for one computer, and try it in another, it may fail, because Windows XP has a nasty habit of not liking to be transplanted between machines.

Haven't used fbwf (which doesn't work with NTFS), only the EWF (which works on NTFS and FAT32). I got a BSOD initially due to improper configuration, so Windows crashed when it loaded the EWF driver. I am eventually going to simplify the required instructions and hopefully make a wiki entry.

All I can suggest is embedded XP and carPC sites might be able to give more help on using fbwf on read-only media.

And to echo Benny Lo, the SSD Aspire One has a dreadfully slow SSD that makes for a poor Windows experience, and an EWF can make the machine more usable. It can also be used for other netbooks with dreadfully slow SSDs (eg: to install Windows on the larger SSD in a 90x)

Last edited by Turionaltec (2008-12-14 10:23:32 pm)

yes trying to boot from cd and card using fbwf. ewf has no problem but fbwf has bsod. since both uses multi(0)partition(1) don't think that the problem. some users comment on fbwf does not effect of lower lower driver so they are writing to xp causing bsod instead of to the ram... any idea to solve the problem? ewf has this delay write problem ...