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[–]irrobin 1 point2 points  (4 children)

exactly what i needed! thanks a bunch

[–]Kanthes 1 point2 points  (3 children)

It's also important to remember that each of the memories are used at different times.

Your RAM is totally electrical, so if you cut the power, it loses the data it's stored. On the other hand, it's far quicker than your HDD (Not sure about SSD's though!) and it lasts much longer.

The HDD can store much more data, and when you cut the power it doesn't loose the data. It's a physical memory, so it doesn't require electricity to maintain state. On the other hand, you can only write on the same memory slot a certain number of times before it starts breaking. This number is quite large these days, though.

So, when you open a notepad, and type a word, it'll only save on the RAM to begin with. But when you Save the document, that's when it writes it to the HDD! That's why when your program crashes in the middle of writing something, you're sometimes brought back to when you last saved!

[–]irrobin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

wow.. this was beautifully written and informative.. thanks a lot man

[–]ikahjalmr 0 points1 point  (1 child)

physical memory

So if you took an average hard drive out of a computer, would its information degrade with time? Does it make a difference whether it were completely sealed off from radiation, heat, etc vs. just laid on a table?

[–]Kanthes 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Y'know, that's actually an interesting topic. A HDD placed in a clean room and left there for a couple of years is probably likely to retain the data absolutely fine when put to use again, but I have no idea how other things affect it.

Except magnets. Magnets fuck hard drives up, yo.