A reader asks: “Why is there a need for separate RAM and hard drives?”

Speaking very generally: RAM is very fast, temporary data storage used only while the device is powered on. The data in RAM goes away when you turn off the device.

Hard drives are for storing data longer term; they retain data even when powered off. But hard drives — even solid state drives! — are much, much slower than RAM.

Naturally, life isn’t that clean-cut, and there are many applications that fudge the line between RAM and drive.

For example, it’s possible to use a hard drive as a kind of slow RAM (that’s what a pagefile/swapfile is). Likewise, it’s possible to use a RAM Disk, which is a very fast hard drive emulated entirely in transient RAM.

But, in general, RAM is very fast memory that’s meant for temporary/transient use while the device is active. A hard drive is for longer-term data storage; slower than RAM, but retaining data even when the device is off.

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