What is fastest FileSystem on Windows to write/read small file?

Question

I have a 3rd-party-program (from the stock exchange) that writes (very fast, real-time) stock data (price and volume of the transaction) to folderX.

• Files are relatively small (less than 500KB)
• Total is ~2000 files per days (it continuously writes to old file if exist)
• I can clean up files every evening by a schedule job.

Another program (of mine) detects changes in that folderX, and consumes it (analyse, parse and send).

So, what FileSystem I should format the disk drive (I have 256GB SSD drive and 16GB RAMDisk drive) to host folderX with best speed?

Answer 1

If your total data quantity is small and you really don't care about the data afterwards (or can copy off what you want) then it sounds like the fastest possible way would be to use a Ramdisk. This would be about the fastest you can get for writing files, almost the same speed as your memory accesses, with a little overhead.

Wikipedia has a reasonably comprehensive list of Ramdisk software.

Personally I would go for the Dataram Ramdisk or its branded spinoff the AMD Radeon Ramdisk. They have both worked well for me in the past, and can be "backed up" to your hard disk at the end of the day. I believe the free version supports up to a 1GB disk, but there is a paid version that can do more.