How does computer memory work?
May 2nd, 2008 | by computermemory |
I’m kind of confused about pretty much everything, not the physical aspects like what is actually going on in the little rectangular box, but more along the lines of the technical stuff.
Like the difference between kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes .
And what memory actually does. I thought it was a measure of how much information could be stored but I’m not exactly sure.
Also how do you check how much memory is on a compute?
What’s hard drive/disk?
Do you use up memory, or is it permanent?
And finally, when your downloading something from a C.D. does minimum memory mean how much it’s going to take up (if memory is indeed a measurement of how much information a computer could hold)? Because the one i was looking to download recommends 512 megabytes of memory, and the little label in my computer says it has 512 megabytes of memory so… is that a bad thing?
As you can probably see I’m fairly clueless when it comes to computers and was hoping someone could enlighten me =) .
BOYD
4 Responses to “How does computer memory work?”
By Rob M on May 2, 2008 | Reply
have a look here
By Chad on May 4, 2008 | Reply
A detailed answer is available here:
.
By GeekMasta on May 6, 2008 | Reply
Memory is not the same as Hard Disk Space. HD Space is the amount of information that can be permanently stored on your computer. Memory is what stores vital information for programs that you are using at a particular moment. Say, if you’re using Microsoft Word, writing a document, the document will be stored in your memory, which is a temporary place. If you were to turn your power off, your memory would be erased. However, when you click save, your computer will take the document from memory and store it permanently on your Hard Disk.
Having 512MB is fine, however, I would recommend upgrading to 1GB of memory. This is pretty much the standard these days.
Here’s a break down of memory/HD size references. A byte is 8 bits. A bit is 1 character usually. So, 1000 bytes is a kilobyte. 1000 kilobytes is a megabyte, and 1000 megabytes is a gigabyte. Most people have at least 80GB of HD space, and 1GB of memory. Hope this helps!
By bor0guy on May 7, 2008 | Reply
There are 2 seperate types of storage in a computer. This can be confusing, since tehy are both referred to as “memory”. Memory is widely accepted to mean system memory, or RAM.
RAM is a volatile storage of temporary information. Volatile meaning anything it was storing is lost once power is removed. (This is why people often tell you to restart your computer if it is really slow).
A hard drive is the permanent (relatively at least. data loss is possible) storage of data in the computer. When you save a file from Word, or download a file from the computer, it is stored on your Hard drive, most often known as the “C:\” drive.
The program you were thinking about installing recommends having system memory of 512 mb or greater. If you jave 512, you meet the minimum requirements for that program. It is merely a recommendation, your computer is very intelligent and will automatically use a section of the hard drive as system memory if your RAM becomes full. Your computer will slow down when this happens, as the hard drive reads and write information much slower than RAM can. This is why you can run a bunch of programs, more than can fit in RAM, and your computer does not freeze up instantaneously.