Does anything speak against installing Firefox 64-bit on my RAM-disk if I already have Firefox 32-bit installed on my main drive?
I have Firefox 32-bit installed on my main C;\ drive on WIndows 10. I've read a recent news article that claims that Firefox session restore writes a ton of bytes onto the drive every day. This is problematic because I use an SSD and try to minimize excessive wear. To make the problem worse, I use Firefox 10-15h every day on average, I have quite a lot of tabs open (up to 1000 [yes I'm an information hoarder with a problem], although most of them aren't loaded as Firefox tends to load tabs on-demand after a crash), use an extension to manage my crashed sessions (with quite liberal settings). My current Firefox (32-bit) crashes often. I believe this is because of the <4GB limit (I have 32GB RAM installed), because I have many tabs open, and quite a handful of extensions.
In order to resolve many issues at once, I would like to migrate to Firefox 64-bit and install it on a RAM disk (whose image is backed up on my SSD before I shut down my PC and restored when I boot it). I would like to do this on a trial basis, where I run it alongside my current C:\ Firefox 32-bit install. I'm worried that there are system settings (registry, system variables etc.) that would make this a bad idea.
Does anything speak against installing Firefox 64-bit on my RAM-disk if I already have Firefox 32-bit installed on my main drive?
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You are able to have multiple versions of Firefox installed on your system at any time and they can be on multiple drives. For example, I currently have five different versions of Firefox installed, including the 32-bit and 64-bit release versions. You are able to run each version on a separate Firefox profile or they can all share a single profile.
I have not tried running Firefox on a RAM-disk, so I cannot vouch for it. However, you shouldn't have any issues installing the 64-bit version for a trial alongside the 32-bit version, provided that you don't install them in the same directory.
Further information about running multiple installs of Firefox can be found here.
Warning: Whenever you are experimenting with Firefox, it is always a good idea to backup your Firefox profile in order to prevent data loss if there is a critical error.
Note: Users switching from the 32-bit version of Firefox to the 64-bit should be advised that the 64-bit version of Firefox does not support NPAPI plugins. Users that still require these plugins should remain on the 32-bit version.
Thanks for your detailed answer. Did you use the zip builds for your five Firefox versions? I'm not sure if that's an installer (that doesn't modify the registry) in a zip archive, or something that launches Firefox directly (without the need of an install), but I generally prefer installers. Also, do I need to use Profile Manager XUL Runner or special target line/launch parameters if I want to share my profile for both the 32- and 64-bit Firefox versions? I feel like there could be issues when a 64-bit application uses a profile that was generated by a 32-bit application..
Maybe it's worth it to simply upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit. In addition to my bookmarks, passwords, and user data, does the profiles folder generally contain extension settings and files (Session Manager sessions etc.)?
Mozilla hasn't had Zip-builds for the Release version of Firefox for many years now. Zip-builds are only available for Beta, Developer Edition, and Nightly builds. The Zip-builds don't do anything with the Registry.
As far as using the Profile Manager XUL Runner application; abandoned and was never completed, still has a few Bugs with the UI. It may work now, but come Firefox 50, 51, or 53 it may just quit working as XUL Runner will be abandoned completely by Mozilla.
My advice is to look at Firefox Portable, and ask in their support forum about running it in RAM disk. Runs its own Profile completely separate from the "installed" versions of Firefox. No connection the the Profile Manager process in Firefox; has it's own "Profile Manager" of sorts that needs to be enabled manually. http://portableapps.com/forums/support/firefox_portable