OSFMount-load disk image as writeable ramdisk without writing back to oriiginal image

[marcusdoc]

Is there a way to have a saved image (in a format that is compressed) load as a writable RAMDisk yet not write these changes back to the original image?

Scenario:
1) user creates a blank RAMDisk formatted NTFS
2) user copies folders/files into this image
3) user sets content type to General (explorer folder option)
4) user creates a compressed image (the archived state)
5) user then can load this image whenever to have a configured writable RAMDisk without the changes in the loaded RAMDisk being saved back to the original archived compressed image file?

Many thanks for an amazing piece of software ... the fastest one that I have tried.
Other vendors of RAMDisk software allow for such a described function; your software goes well beyond by writing back to the original archived file (amazing job!) but this function is something that I don't need for this particular application.

[David (PassMark)]

If you are using a RAMDrive, then changes to the file system are stored only in RAM.
This means if the machine is powered down, or the drive un unmounted, any changes are lost. So nothing is saved back to disk.
(there is a manual option to save the RAM drive to disk, but this doesn't happen automatically).

So what you describe should work.
Just a note on compression however. Sometimes good SSDs have a faster transfer rate than decompression rates for compressed files. So having a compressed image might not help much. Raw image might be faster, depending on hardware. Also image compression will be detrimental if the files in the file system are already compressed (e.g. JPG files, Word & Excel files, etc...).

[marcusdoc]

I've tried multiple scenarios but it when I do the following

1) Make empty RAM drive
2) Set size, initialize partition table, and format the drive accordingly
3) Set drive emulation as Logical, set the drive letter, then mount the drive
4) Make the changes to the drive (copy folders/files)
5) Make an image of the drive
6) Unmount the drive
7) Mount the image file just made

it either is read-only OR it writes back a copy of the changes to a different file (main image plus files of changes)

Is is possible to have the loaded mounted image in RAM in a read/write state without writing changes back to files (file of changes)?

Thanks!!!

[David (PassMark)]

On Step 7 you need to select to re-mount the image file as a RAM drive.

[marcusdoc]

If I go through the GUI, then I can set the RAM drive as read/write
If I use the following command, even though the vm flag is set, the mounted drive is read-only
osfmount.com -a -t vm -f D:\ProgramData\Main.aff -m Z:

[David (PassMark)]

Can you try adding -o rw to make it read / write.

[marcusdoc]

That worked ... thanks!
Amazing piece of software!!