I have a computer with 512mRAM but and working at home for a company that demands I have 1 gig of memory on my computer. I have several unused flash drives that were given me by my brother.
2006-09-05 12:26:28 · 12 answers · asked by wiserdadddy 1 in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Desktops
According to the rumor mill Microsoft's new OS "Vista" is supposed to ship with this kind of functionality, depending on what version you buy. Otherwise I'd say you're out of luck.
2006-09-05 12:32:18 · answer #1 · answered by knieveltech 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yes you can use a flash drive to "simulate" RAM but it isn't recommended because it will actually slow your PC down even more!
RAM is what your computer uses for running programs and storing/caching information temporarily - especially information that you will use over and over again. When you are using up a lot of your RAM your PC will use a portion of your hard drive space called a "paging file" to swap out" what's in RAM to make more room and fake your computer into thinking you have more RAM. You can always play around with the size of this paging file - Control Panel, System, Advanced, Performance Settings, Advanced, Virtual Memory. But most often it's best to use Window's recommended setting for this unless you've got a huge hard drive with lots of free space.
But this "swapping" between your PC's RAM and the hard drive "paging file," causes your computer's performance to take a hit. In other words it can slow down performance as your RAM temporarily stores things to that paging file to enable itself to hold more. Then your RAM has to put the stuff it's stored in your paging file back into itself once it has room again.
So then why shouldn't you use a flash drive for your "paging file?" Well, a flash drive is not only slower than RAM, like a hard drive is because of the swapping but ACCESSING your flash drive is much slower than accessing your hard drive so it's all about the slowness of access between your system RAM and a flash drive. That swapping time would be awful and you'd really want to run from the room screaming if you're trying to run a program that requires a lot of RAM.
The best advice is to simply bite the bullet and upgrade to 1 gig of memory so that programs run like they should.
2006-09-05 12:45:59 · answer #2 · answered by nquizzitiv 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Simple answer... no. Your best bet is to upgrade if at all possible (crucial.com can tell you how much your pc can take).
Windows Vista (in beta) includes something called ReadyBoost, if your flash drives supports USB 2.0 and something like 4.5 mbps writes you can use it to "optimize performance". But it doesn't actually change the amount of RAM windows reports. And don't get your hopes up, because my computer only supports 512MB of RAM max and ReadyBoost seemed to actually slow down performance!
http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx
2006-09-05 12:32:47 · answer #3 · answered by Glenn 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
A USB flash drive: A compact USB flash memory drive that acts like a portable hard drive, letting you store and transport data.
You cannot use it to add RAM to a computer...
2006-09-05 12:30:32 · answer #4 · answered by speech1 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
that is faster than making use of your HDD as VRAM, yet no longer as quickly because the equipment memory. the problem is the USB bus actually facilitates a lot information to pass at a time. Vista has some type of goofy call for it, notwithstanding it extremely works via making use of any put in flash memory gadget truly of HDD VRAM.
2016-12-06 11:43:04 · answer #5 · answered by lucky 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The "readyboost" feature of Windows Vista will do that.It comes out Jan. 30 2007
2006-09-05 19:18:20 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
No, a flash drive works like a hard disk.
2006-09-05 12:30:26 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
flash drives only provide portable memory not RAM so if u want more RAM you need to upgrade the pc.
2006-09-05 12:32:32 · answer #8 · answered by rioji_sama 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No, you cannot. Even if you could, you would have a very slow system, limited by the speed of the USB interface to access your memory.
2006-09-05 12:32:15 · answer #9 · answered by quagi m 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
it is quite likely that you can add another 512 of RAM to your computer.. see your local professional or ask the company with which you are employed.
2006-09-05 12:33:51 · answer #10 · answered by martiniac 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋