Memory and Storage - The Confusion Must End

(updated 03/25/10)

by Randy Yates

I've been working with computers for about 20 years total. There are many common mistakes new users make. The most prevalent of those mistakes is the confusion of the term "memory". With this article I hope to explain how "memory" is used in the computer world.

When you think of the term "memory" you think about things you can remember from your past, like learning to ride a bike or meeting your first girlfriend/boyfriend. These are typical memories from our lives. This isn't the same in the computer world. A computer remembers something by accessing it from storage. The data is typically in the form of a file. It could be a picture, a movie, a text document, or any other type of file. It is data. A computer stores data on a hard drive, CD, DVD, thumb drive, or other storage device. This is STORAGE. Remember that. It isn't MEMORY. 

Memory in computer terms refers to RAM, or Random Access Memory. RAM is a collection of chips that are used to temporarily store running applications and open files. When relating computers to your brain, RAM is like short term memory, while storage devices are like long term memory. When someone asks you how much memory your computer has, they are referring to RAM. 

RAM is like the middle man. When you start an application in Windows, your computer first finds that program on your hard drive, it reads the program into RAM. RAM is extremely fast when compared to a hard drive, but a hard drive can hold a lot more. A hard drive is also permanent storage. When the power is turned off, the hard drive doesn't lose any of the data, because the data is written to the disk. RAM, on the other hand, loses data, when power is turned off. 

Memory (RAM) is important for a computer to run smoothly. Windows uses something called a "page file" when your computer starts to get low on available RAM. The page file exists on your computer's hard drive. As I stated earlier, hard drives are much slower than RAM. When your RAM is used up and your computer has to use a page file, the system starts to slow way down. How much it slows down depends on how much RAM deficiency exists. 

My bare minimum RAM recommendation for a modern computer system is 2GB. This will ensure that the computer doesn't have to over-utilize a page file. Over-using a page file can cause needless wear and teat on the computers hard drive, since typical hard drives are mechanical in nature (solid state drives are an exception but still have write limitations). Another recommendation I have is to restart your computer at least every day. If an application has any memory leaks, this will give everything a fresh start and free up the used memory.