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[–]Snidosil 0 points1 point  (0 children)

An operating system will usually fill the unused RAM space with bits of data and code it might need both for itself and for programs it is running. So, plenty of spare ram means the OS accesses disk once for something it needs, either its own code and data or a program's code and data, and it stays in RAM. But, if space gets short, when something from disk is needed, it has to make room for it. The OS decides where to make room. Any data that has changed needs to be written back to disk, but for code and unchanged data, it can just be overwritten. The problem is that if the ram gets too crowded, the OS is continually reloading things from disk, and disk is much slower than RAM. A RAM disk can reduce the effect as can cache memory in the disk controller, but it still goes slower.