Difference between RAMfs and TMPfs

Ramfs vs Tmpfs

Primarily both ramfs and tmpfs does the same thing with few minor differences.

• Ramfs will grow dynamically.  So, you need control the process that writes the data to make sure ramfs doesn’t go above the available RAM size in the system. Let us say you have 2GB of RAM on your system and created a 1 GB ramfs and mounted as /tmp/ram. When the total size of the /tmp/ram crosses 1GB, you can still write data to it.  System will not stop you from writing data more than 1GB. However, when it goes above total RAM size of 2GB, the system may hang, as there is no place in the RAM to keep the data.
• Tmpfs will not grow dynamically. It would not allow you to write more than the size you’ve specified while mounting the tmpfs. So, you don’t need to worry about controlling the process that writes the data to make sure tmpfs doesn’t go above the specified limit. It may give errors similar to “No space left on device”.
• Tmpfs uses swap.
• Ramfs does not use swap.

4. Disadvantages of Ramfs and Tmpfs

Since both ramfs and tmpfs is writing to the system RAM, it would get deleted once the system gets rebooted, or crashed. So, you should write a process to pick up the data from ramfs/tmpfs to disk in periodic intervals. You can also write a process to write down the data from ramfs/tmpfs to disk while the system is shutting down. But, this will not help you in the time of system crash.

Table: Comparison of ramfs and tmpfs

Experimentation	Tmpfs	Ramfs
Fill maximum space and continue writing	Will display error	Will continue writing
Fixed Size	Yes	No
Uses Swap	Yes	No
Volatile Storage	Yes	Yes

If you want your process to write faster, opting for tmpfs is a better choice with precautions about the system crash.

Courtesy:http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2008/11/overview-of-ramfs-and-tmpfs-on-linux/