The Computers & You Archive

Perhaps the most mis un der stand con cept amongst computer users is the difference be tween RAM and Hard Drive space. Knowing the difference becomes very important when trying to figure out why the latest and greatest "must have" soft\ware won't work on your computer. It also helps you figure out what needs to be done so it will work.

When the computer loads your file from your hard drive where does that information go? It makes a copy of the information from the hard drive and places it in RAM.Why? For speed. Information in RAM is stored based on electrical signals. So to change information simply requires sending a different electrical signal to the chip.

This happens very quickly. Let's say you are typing a document in Word. Every key you press on the keyboard be comes part of your document. You don't realize it but, every letter you press has to be remembered by the computer. It accomplishes this by saving those keys in RAM.

It happens so quickly, you don't even notice it. So it's fast. But what happens when you turn off your computer? All the in for mation is lost since the electrical signals storing the information have been turned off.

So, as you can see, they are both necessary forms of storage and serve different purposes. Generally, a computer has far more Hard Drive storage than RAM. A typical computer one might purchase to day might have 2gig of RAM, and 500 GB of Hard Drive storage.