What is RAM and What is Hard Drive Explained
When it comes to a computer, there are so many basic computer terms that people find confusing such as RAM, mhz, gb and morethat can confuse people and leave them asking questions like “What is RAM?”, “What is a hard drive?”.
Having a better appreciative of some of the lingo can help you feel more comfortable using your computer, helping you get better at them more easily.
A lot of people I talk to seem to be remorseful about their lack of information. It’s too terrible people feel that way; they really shouldn’t.
What I tell them is that while they may not know as much as I do about computers, it’s not their fault, and they probably are knowledgeable about things I don’t know anything about at all. All you need is a name who takes the time to clarify things to you in a way that makes sense.
One term many people confuse is memory (also known as RAM), and hard drive storage space.
RAM stands for Random Access Memory (it’s OK there won’t be an exam). It is a temporary working space the computer uses to get work done, which gets emptied when the computer is turned off.
Reckon of it like a work bench or table. You have a project you’re working on and you do your project on the table and when you’re done, you place all away.
The hard drive is the main place your computer uses to store in rank. It looks like a rectangular metal box about 3.5″ wide (or 2.5″ on a laptop), which contains a non-comes off disk. It is the disk inside the drive which stores all.
Reckon of it as a cupboard where you store the tools or materials for your project — when you want to work on something you choose the things you need from the cupboard, place them on the bench and work on the project.
This is like when you run a curriculum; the computer loads the curriculum from the hard drive into memory.
So the larger the space, the more you can store — so in other words the more programs you can have installed, the more songs or pictures or videos you can save on your computer.
Many people accidentally call their computer (the huge box-like thing hooked up to the screen) a hard drive, but this is based on a variation of opinion. Both RAM and the hard drive are parts located inside of the computer, and most people never in fact see these parts.
Most people who own a computer that’s only a few years ancient have a ton of more space than they’ll ever use. Few people ever fill them up, unless they are keeping a lot of larger files such as music or pictures, or mainly video files. Saving entire films on your computer can really eat up space very quickly.
If a name tells you need more memory, or or you get you a message about being low on memory, this usually means you don’t have enough RAM. This can slow your computer down drastically.
Reckon of the table thought again: if your bench is very small, you can’t fit all you need on it to get your work done, so you’re constantly wasting time moving stuff off and back onto the table to get your work done, if you can do any work at all.
Both RAM and hard drive space are leisurely with the same terms: kilobytes (KB), megabytes (MB), and gigabytes (GB). This may be one reason people confuse the two words.
So why is it that you buy a computer one year that has a lot of RAM, and two or three years go by, why do people tell you it doesn’t have enough memory? This is because each year the mean size of software, and the amount of memory it needs, gets larger.
It’s as if the tools you use on your workbench keep on the rise every year so you ultimately have to get a larger bench.
If your computer seems to be in succession more slowly recently, or you’ve been having odd errors, it could be that you need to get more memory, which doesn’t cost much to do and can add life to your computer. It’s not a cure-all for a slow computer, but it can help.
Remember, computer basics and the terms doesn’t have to be hard to be with you, just as long as it’s clarified in a way that in fact makes sense!
