These are great instructions!!! Thanks so much for posting in-depth details for everyone! I will be trying out your methods as well.
How do you create an NTFS hard link to various drive paths? I follow everything else, but I've never heard of NTFS hard links.
Could you please provide some details on this. I've also linked to your post on the OP as I think others will find your technique very very useful. :celebration:

"mklink" is what you are looking for . . .

So here is what I do
Copy my C:\Oblivion\Data\ to the Z:\ (the ram drive) (using windows exploder or robocopy or whatever you want)
Rename the folder to "Od" or whatever you feel like naming it.
Delete the folder C:\Oblivion\Data\
Create a directory Junction from C:\Oblivion\Data\ to Z:\Od
Proper syntax from the command line would be -

mklink /J "C:\Oblivion\Data\" "Z:\Od\"

You will now have a folder "C:\Oblivion\Data" that looks like a normal folder in that location except the contents of that folder are physically located on the Ram Drive!

-dan


Edit: I am using Dataram RAMDisk - I can't tell you what version from here at work, but I haven't updated since I got it about a year ago. I tried a bunch of different programs that were free then bought the licence because this one had the best UI (for me at least). I have had a couple of image file corruptions over the past year, but no problems other than that. Note, it takes a while to move 11 GB of data from disk to RAM so your computer will start up significantly slower when you have it enabled.

umm I am a moron today . . .
You can't use /J across drives only /D links
Syntax should have been

mklink /D "C:\Oblivion\Data\" "Z:\Od\"

sorry if that caused anyone confusion . . .

-dan

I hadn't tried it yet as I'm still at work, but I will be soon!!! Thanks again for the follow up

I did some experimentation with RAMdisk last few days which I thought might interest people. I only have 4GB of RAM on my PC (64bit Windows 7) so it wasn't feasable for me to copy much of my meshes or textures to RAM (25+ GB fromlots of graphic improvement mods and large quest mods). However from a post I read somewhere, one source of stuttering is loading the distantLOD files. These files are all small, but I had like 12000 of them in the data\distantLOD directory, so I guess wading through them all causes Oblivion to stutter. To check this, I simply deleted all files in this directory (don't worry they can be regenerated with TES4LODGEN); I saw 2 effects: (1) Major FPS improvement, at the expense of objects popping up in the near distance, and (2) way less noticeable stutter effect when crossing cell boundaries (often my stutters were accompanied by a crash, such crashes seemed to reduce dramatically)

So with this in mind I made a small RAMDisk (only 40MB). I moved the distantLOD directory to it, then made a symbolic link from the original directory to the new one on the RAMdisk so Oblivion could find it. I found that stuttering and crashing did indeed reduce noticably for me (though crashes haven't been completely eliminated). In combination with Oblivion Stutter Remover, I now enjoy much longer periods of gameplay between crashes.

Regarding performance, I didn't notice any increase in FPS using the small RAMdisk. However, my experiment with deleteing all the distantLOD files opened my eyes to what a huge FPS drain it is to render the VWD objects. I implemented some of the tips from the readme file that comes with Arthmoor's RAEVWD mod (in particular, reducing uGridDistantCount to 18 and disabling Better Cities VWD.esp); now I enjoy much better FPS performance at very small cost to game beauty, and the use of the RAMdisk has improved stuttering and reduced the crashes. In summary, even a small RAMdisk has made a huge difference to my enjoyment of the game.

More detailed instructions:
1. Download RAMdisk (link in opening post)
2. Use Ramdisk utility to start an unformatted 40MB drive (mklink command won't work with FAT formatted drives)
3. Go to Computer Management (via Control Panel Administrative Tools)
4. Go to Storage->Disk Management
5. Click on the visual representation of the new disk
6. Right click to create a simple volume
7. Accept the maximum size
8. Assign the drive letter R:
9. Quick format as NTFS with volume label MyRamDisk (no file and folder compression)
--> MyRamDisk (R:) will now be available in explorer
10. Regenerate your distantLOD folder if necessary with TES4LODGEN (make sure your load order has been finalised before this step)
11. Move the DistantLOD folder from C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\oblivion\Data\ to R:
(non-Steam users substitute the appropriate path to your oblivion data directory. And keep a backup of this directory somewhere so you can redo this step if you restart your RAMdisk)
12. In a command prompt window (for Windows 7 need to run this command window as administrator) type
mklink /J "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\oblivion\Data\DistantLOD" R:\DistantLOD
13. Run Oblivion and check stuttering has improved (hopefully this does indeed work for others the way it worked for me)
14. Once satisfied, return to the RAMdisk utility, make an image, and set it to load this image at startup. Since its a small RAMdisk the creation time is hardly noticable during Windows startup.

Thanks far327 and Mahjers! I forgot how to find the disk manager and didn't know you could make NTFS volumes with RAMDisk this way. RAMDisk works well for Minecraft servers too.

I believe credit is due to kandiedan as well.

Yeah and to anyone who said anything really. mklink is something I didnt know about until recently, they are less used and less available tools for regular users but very useful.

Doing the DistandLOD folder seems like it would be the best use of this software all around. With OSR, the only stutter I ever see anymore is from loading LOD data at cell borders. Having 65MB of it probably isn't helping that. Nice thing is, since it's not dozens of GB worth of stuff, nearly everyone could spare a 100MB chunk to shift this folder to. Even 32 bit users.