How to Create a Ramdisk in MS DOS (5 Steps)

By Alexander Gokhfeld

RAMdisk allows users to have virtual disk drives.
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A RAMdisk, or RAM drive, is a block of the primary computer memory accessed by MS-DOS as virtual disk drive. It transfers data much faster than a hard disk drive, since it has no moving parts, but data on RAMdisk will be lost when power is off or you reboot the computer. A RAMdisk appears in MS-DOS as a physical hard disk with the chosen size, drive letter and file system. You can copy, move and delete files on it. The setup of the DEVICE option in the CONFIG.SYS file allows users to create the RAMdisk in MS-DOS operating system.

Step 1

Boot your computer into MS-DOS operating system.

Step 2

Type in "edit" at the command line prompt to open editor program.

Step 3

Click the "File," "Open" and double-click on the "config.sys" file.

Step 4

Add the following lines at the beginning of the file:

DEVICE=C:\HIMEM.SYS

DEVICE=C:\EMM386.EXE RAM

DEVICE=C:\RAMDRIVE.SYS 32767 512 256 /e R:

Step 5

Click "File," "Save As," "OK" to create the "R" RAM disk in MS-DOS.

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