How can I create a RAM disk programmatically?

Question

I am not looking for a code that invokes a command line utility, which does the trick. I am actually interested to know the API used to create a RAM disk.

EDIT

Motivation: I have a third party library which expects a directory name in order to process the files in that directory in a certain way. I have these files zipped in an archive. I wish to extract the archive into a RAM disk and pass the third party the path to the respective directory on that RAM disk. As you can see, memory mapped files are of no use to me.

Answer 1

ImDisk is a RAM disk app that creates a virtual drive from a sector of memory, and has an API that can be called from .NET.

class RamDisk
{
    public const string MountPoint = "X:";

    public void createRamDisk()
    {

        try
        {
            string initializeDisk   = "imdisk -a ";
            string imdiskSize       = "-s 1024M ";
            string mountPoint       = "-m "+ MountPoint + " ";


            ProcessStartInfo procStartInfo  = new ProcessStartInfo();
            procStartInfo.UseShellExecute   = false;
            procStartInfo.CreateNoWindow    = true;
            procStartInfo.FileName          = "cmd";
            procStartInfo.Arguments         = "/C " + initializeDisk + imdiskSize + mountPoint;
            Process.Start(procStartInfo);

            formatRAMDisk();

        }
        catch (Exception objException)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("There was an Error, while trying to create a ramdisk! Do you have imdisk installed?");
            Console.WriteLine(objException);
        }

    }

    /**
     * since the format option with imdisk doesn't seem to work
     * use the fomat X: command via cmd
     * 
     * as I would say in german:
     * "Von hinten durch die Brust ins Auge"
     * **/
    private void formatRAMDisk(){

        string cmdFormatHDD = "format " + MountPoint + "/Q /FS:NTFS";

        SecureString password = new SecureString();
        password.AppendChar('0');
        password.AppendChar('8');
        password.AppendChar('1');
        password.AppendChar('5');

        ProcessStartInfo formatRAMDiskProcess   = new ProcessStartInfo();
        formatRAMDiskProcess.UseShellExecute    = false;
        formatRAMDiskProcess.CreateNoWindow     = true;
        formatRAMDiskProcess.RedirectStandardInput     = true;
        formatRAMDiskProcess.FileName           = "cmd";
        formatRAMDiskProcess.Verb               = "runas";
        formatRAMDiskProcess.UserName           = "Administrator";
        formatRAMDiskProcess.Password           = password;
        formatRAMDiskProcess.Arguments          = "/C " + cmdFormatHDD;
        Process process                         = Process.Start(formatRAMDiskProcess);

        sendCMDInput(process);
    }

    private void sendCMDInput(Process process)
    {
        StreamWriter inputWriter = process.StandardInput;
        inputWriter.WriteLine("J");
        inputWriter.Flush();
        inputWriter.WriteLine("RAMDisk for valueable data");
        inputWriter.Flush();
    }

    public string getMountPoint()
    {
        return MountPoint;
    }
}