Setting up a RAM Disk on Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi OS is a Linux-based distribution that can be installed easily on the Raspberry Pi device through an SD card. However, the major advantage of using an SD card is that it may get damaged in case of an excess read and write process on the card. To help protect the SD card, it’s a good idea to create a RAM drive on the Raspberry Pi system to begin storing the temporary data of a file on a RAM disk instead of an SD card.

Follow this guide to easily set up a RAM disk on a Raspberry Pi system.

Setting up a RAM Disk on Raspberry Pi

Before creating a RAM disk on Raspberry Pi, let’s first check the root file system information using the following command:

Now, open the system file with the name “fstab” in the terminal using the nano editor:

Within the file, add the following line with the RAM disk size according to your choice.

Note: The tmpfs is a virtual file system used to store files in volatile memory and typically created on RAM.

Once done, mount the RAM disk to the system using the following command:

After the changes, you can confirm RAM drive addition to the system using the following command:

The above output confirms that we have successfully created a 10MB RAM disk on Raspberry Pi system. From now on, your system’s temporary files will be stored at this location, which will help boost the performance of your system.

Conclusion

RAM Disk is a virtual memory storage used to speed up the performance of your system as it stores all system temporary files and cache until your system reboots. You can create a RAM disk on the Raspberry Pi system from the guidelines mentioned above to speed up the device’s performance and protect the SD card from damage.