How to Increase Your windows PC's RAM Capacity with your Hard Disk Drive

When we hear the word "RAM" , a lot comes to the mind. People with low ram computers usually frown at the sound of the word "ram", others with computers of at least 6gb ram smile because they feel their PC would carry out all basic computer operations without lagging. There is one last set of people who would jubilate at the sound of the word "RAM" , these people only know one kind of ram; which usually ends up in the cooking pot.

Today I'll be talking about the computer RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY (RAM). The RAM is basically a computer memory that dynamically stores program and data values during operation and in which each byte of memory may be directly accessed. In the past, 512MB RAM used to be enough to efficiently handle complex programs and multitasking in a computer, but these days, computer applications are becoming increasingly better and this means that it needs more RAM capacity to work efficiently. Today a computer with a 4GB RAM capacity will still experience some form of lagging especially if you are running heavy applications or games. The Good news is that you can increase your RAM capacity with your Hard Drive as a "virtual RAM" .

Let me explain; A portion of the computer's hard drive is set aside for a paging file or a scratch partition, and the combination of physical RAM and the paging file form the system's total memory. (For example, if a computer has 4 GB of RAM and a 3 GB page file, the operating system has 7 GB total memory available to it.) When the system runs low on physical memory, it can "swap" portions of RAM to the paging file to make room for new data, as well as to read previously swapped information back into RAM. This allows your PC to run smoothly even while multitasking.

HOW TO USE YOUR HARD DISK AS A VIRTUAL RAM

STEP 1

Goto your desktop page, then navigate to "My Computer" then right click on an empty space, click on "properties" .

STEP 2

Now click on "advanced system settings", you'll see this on the left panel.

STEP 3

Under performance tab, click on Settings option, a new dialog box will be opened.

STEP 4

In the new dialog box, just click on the Advanced tab, then click on the change option under the virtual memory

STEP 5

Untick the Automatically Manage Paging files option and then choose the drive whose paging memory you want to alter and the simply define the Custom Size there. Then click on set and then ok option.

Now observe your system's performance, especially if you're running heavy applications or multitasking.

I just thought you should know that excessive use of this mechanism may result in thrashing and generally hampers overall system performance, mainly because hard drives are slower than RAM.

This process would be reverted every time you restart your system or you can follow same procedure to revert it, only that this time you'll tick the box in step 5. Have fun.

Cheers.