Virtual Memory : What is Virtual Memory and How it Works

Virtual Memory is a typical part of most operating-system on personal computer systems. It has become so typical because it provides a big advantage for customers at a very low cost.
In this article, you will learn exactly what virtual storage is, what your pc uses it for and how to set up it on your own device to achieve maximum performance.
Most computer systems today have something like 32 or 64 mb of RAM available for the CPU to use (see How RAM Works for details on RAM). Unfortunately, that amount of RAM is not enough to run all of the programs that most customers expect to run at once.
For example, if you fill the OS  an e-mail program, a Web web browser and word processor into RAM simultaneously, 32 MB is not enough to hold it all. If there were no such thing as virtual storage, then once you filled up the available RAM your PC would have to say, "Sorry, you can not fill any more applications. Please close another program to fill a new one." With virtual storage, what the pc can do is look at RAM for areas that have not been used recently and copy them onto the difficult hard generate drive. This liberates up area in RAM to fill the new program.
Because this duplicating happens instantly, you don't even know it is happening, and it makes your PC experience like is has endless RAM area even though it only has 32 MB installed. Because difficult hard generate drive area is so much cheaper than RAM snacks, it also has a nice economic advantage. ­
The read/write speed of a difficult hard generate drive is much more slowly than RAM, and the technology of a difficult hard generate drive is not designed toward obtaining small pieces of information at some point. If your program has to rely too intensely on virtual storage, you will notice a significant performance drop. The key is to have enough RAM to handle everything you tend to work on simultaneously -- then, the only time you "feel" the slowness of virtual storage is is when there's a minor stop when you're changing projects. When that's the situation, virtual storage is perfect.
When it is not the situation, the OS has to constantly exchange information returning and forth between RAM and the difficult hard generate drive. This is known as knocking, and it can make your PC experience incredibly slow.
The area of the difficult hard generate drive that stores the RAM image is known as a web page information file. It holds pages of RAM on the difficult hard generate drive, and the OS goes information returning and forth between the site information file and RAM. On a Windows device, web page files have a .SWP expansion.Windows 98 is an example of a typical OS that has exclusive storage. Windows 98 has an intelligent exclusive storage manager that uses a standard setting to help Windows spend difficult generate drive area for exclusive storage as needed. For most circumstances, this should meet your needs, but you may want to manually set up exclusive storage, especially if you have more than one actual physical difficult generate drive or speed-critical programs.
To do this, open the "Control Panel" screen and double-click on the "System" icon. The program discussion screen will open. Simply simply select the "Performance" tab and then simply select the "Virtual Memory" button.
Click on the option that says, "Let me specify my own exclusive storage configurations." This will make the options below that statement become active. Simply simply select the drop-down list beside "Hard disk:" to select the difficult generate drive that you wish to set up exclusive storage for. Remember that a good principle is to equally split exclusive storage between the actual physical difficult pushes you have.
In the "Minimum:" box, enter the lowest quantity of difficult generate drive area you wish to use for exclusive storage on the difficult generate specified. The quantities are in MB  For the "C:" generate, the lowest should be 2 mb. The "Maximum:" figure can be anything you like, but one possible maximum is twice actual physical RAM area. Windows standard is normally 12 MB above the quantity of actual physical RAM in your computer. To put the new configurations into effect, close the discussion box and restart your computer.
The quantity of difficult generate drive area you spend for exclusive storage is important. If you spend too little, you will get "Out of Memory" errors. If you find that you need to keep enhancing the exclusive storage, you probably are also finding that your program is sluggish and accesses the difficult generate drive constantly. In that case, you should consider buying more RAM to keep the ratio between RAM and exclusive storage about 2:1. Some programs enjoy having lots of exclusive storage but do not access it very much. In that case, large paging files work well.
One trick that can improve the performance of exclusive storage (especially when considerable quantities of exclusive storage are needed) is to make the lowest and highest possible sizes of the exclusive storage computer file identical. This forces the OS to spend the entire paging computer file when you start the machine. That keeps the paging computer file from having to grow while programs are running, which improves performance. Many video programs recommend this technique to avoid pauses while reading or writing video information between difficult generate and tape.
Another factor in the performance of exclusive storage is the location of the page file  If your program has several actual physical difficult hard pushes (not several generate letters, but actual drives), you can spread the work among them by making smaller page files on each generate. This simple modification will significantly rate up any program that makes heavy use of exclusive storage. If your pc does not have the ram (RAM) needed to run a program or operation, Windows uses exclusive storage to make up.
Virtual storage brings together your pc's RAM with temporary area on your difficult drive. When RAM runs low, exclusive storage moves information from RAM to an area called a paging data file. Moving information to and from the paging data file liberates up RAM to complete its work.
The more RAM your PC has, the faster your programs will generally run. If a lack of RAM is reducing your PC  you might be influenced to increase exclusive storage to make up. However, your PC can read information from RAM much more quickly than from a difficult drive, so adding RAM is a better solution.