Question
I want to minimize the loading time of Skyrim and decided to install a ram disk and hard link one of the big .bsa files in the Skyrim data folder. There are 3 .bsa files over 1GB. Which one is the better to offload my hard disk? Here are the choices: Textures, Meshes and Voices. What is the .esm files? Is this good at all? I admit I didn't noticed a big improvement with the texture file.
Edit: Put skyrim.esm on the ram disk but the game doesn't start.
Edit: Using Process.exe and monitoring TESV.exe the top ten files by the menu Tools->File Summary on my box is:
1. meshes.bsa
2. Textures folder
3. Skyrim.esm
4. Sound folder
5. Voices.bsa
6. Strings folder
7. music folder
The file textures.bsa seems to be totaly irrelevant.
Edit: Here is why skyrim.esm doesn't work on the ramdisk. It's because NTFS doesn't allow hardlinks accross partition: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=355025.
Edit: To the people that vote to close or downvote read my question carefully and also the edit. Unlike Tom Wijsman is writing in his comment the third edit isn't an assumption!!!! Skyrim.esm doesn't load from a ramdisk and the reason is written in my edit and in the post. READ BEFORE YOU POST!!!
Answer
Wouldn't really buy you anything. RAM disks take away real RAM from your disk cache, which is the better place to locate big and small files. For instance, it will store only the parts of the file in RAM that you actually use, whereas a RAMdisk has to keep whole files in RAM.
Now, you're worried about Bethesda doing a poor job, but that RAM cache is managed by Windows, i.e. Microsoft. And since it's such a critical core component, it's well-optimized.
Check more discussion of this question.
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