I think the OP means using his memory as a RAM disk. It is making part of his memory act like a virtual hard drive to get faster performance. I never set one up since I don't have enough memory for it so I have no idea how to go about getting Minecraft to run off one. Probably do a google search on Running Minecraft on a RAM disk should get you more information.
That's not possible... and if your system get's shut down all the RAM would be wiped.
What do you mean "run off RAM only" though?
If you have no HDD, you could not boot your system, unless you have a CD-ROM boot disk, but even then, it would be extremely slow, and you could not save any files to it anyway, so you could not download Minecraft or anything else for that matter.
That's not possible... and if your system get's shut down all the RAM would be wiped.
Yes, it is possible. Here is software from AMD that lets you setup a free 4GB RAM disk.There is other software around that lets you do the same thing. I don't know much about how it works but I think once you properly shutdown your computer it will save everything from the RAM disk to your normal hard drive. However, you are probably right about potentially losing the data on the RAM disk if your computer shuts down from a power outage or a crash.
Once you have the RAM disk setup you might be able to change the Minecraft install directory using the profile editor in the launcher, though I never messed around with that so I'm not sure. If not then you would need to setup symbolic links which are fairly easy but kind of a pain to setup correctly.
However, you need to make sure you have enough RAM to set this up. Would only slow things down if you set nearly half your total RAM as storage.
I've used a ramdisk before to run MC. There is a performance increase, yes, but its not worth the hassle. You have to make sure you save the ramdisk to your HDD every time or else your entire minecraft install is gone the instant you turn off the PC. And then when you want to play it again you have to load it back up from disk into ram. As for running it without a harddrive, you could conceivably run it off a livecd linux distro but you'd have to at least save to a thumbdrive or else you'll run into a similar problem.
What do you mean "run off RAM only" though?
If you have no HDD, you could not boot your system, unless you have a CD-ROM boot disk, but even then, it would be extremely slow, and you could not save any files to it anyway, so you could not download Minecraft or anything else for that matter.
At least 86% of what I say is always correct.
Yes, it is possible. Here is software from AMD that lets you setup a free 4GB RAM disk.There is other software around that lets you do the same thing. I don't know much about how it works but I think once you properly shutdown your computer it will save everything from the RAM disk to your normal hard drive. However, you are probably right about potentially losing the data on the RAM disk if your computer shuts down from a power outage or a crash.
Once you have the RAM disk setup you might be able to change the Minecraft install directory using the profile editor in the launcher, though I never messed around with that so I'm not sure. If not then you would need to setup symbolic links which are fairly easy but kind of a pain to setup correctly.
However, you need to make sure you have enough RAM to set this up. Would only slow things down if you set nearly half your total RAM as storage.