What's the difference between the hard drive and the memory of a computer?

Question

You know, when they explain the especification of a computer, like 40 Gb hard drive and 1gb memory or something?

Answer 1

Your hard drive is physical storage, like a filing cabinet, to keep your software and data files on where it can be easily retrieved by the CPU. On older computers, this used to take the form of punched tape, then magnetic tape, then floppy diskettes up to the modern USB flash sticks and your trusty hard drive. The memory (theoretical 1Gb) is your RAM or Random Access Memory. This is a volatile memory and everything that is being processed at any given point in time is put into RAM or cached. The more RAM you have, the faster your machine will run (again theoretically). Being volatile, though, everything that is in the RAM will be lost when power is lost or the pc is shut down. Therefore, it pays to store whatever you are working on regularly to hard disk in case of power failure. It also pays to back up your hard disk regularly (at least once a month if not more in case of something nasty happenning to it ( like a virus or other corruption ).

By the way, contrary to what has been said previously by others, the memory is nothing to do with the CPU. The CPU is the Central Processing Unit or, if you like the thinking part of the PC. This process all the commands and sends commands to other components. The memory is accessed by the CPU and other modules by means of buses. The system BUS connects to the CPU and then there may be a seperate bus if you use AGP graphics or, occasionaly (more often then not) modern day graphics cards come with their own memory (RAM) to save using the system memory. The CPU is your Intel Pentium.x or your AMD Athlon.x, etc.

Answer 2

Memory and disk space are perhaps the most widely-confused terms in the computing world. To truly comprehend how your computer works, you must first understand what memory and disk space are. The hard disk, sometimes called the "hard drive," which is actually the mechanism that holds the hard disk, is a spindle of magnetic discs that can hold several gigabytes of data. Therefore, disk space refers to how much space you have available on your hard disk for storing files. When you save a document or install a new program, it gets stored on your hard disk. The more files you download, install, or save on your hard disk, the more full it becomes. Memory, on the other hand is not the same as disk space! Memory refers to the random access memory (RAM) inside your computer. These are small chips that hold several memory modules side by side. Your computer uses memory (RAM) to store actively running programs on the computer, including the operating system. For example, the operating system's interface and other processes get loaded into memory when the computer boots up. When you open a program like Microsoft Word, it gets loaded into the computer's memory as well. When you quit the program, the memory space is freed up for other programs. RAM can be accessed several hundred times faster than a hard drive, which is why active programs must be loaded into the RAM from the hard drive. Because most data on the hard disk does not need to get loaded into the system memory at one time, computers typically have much more hard disk space than memory. For example, a computer may come with a 200 GB hard drive, and only 1 GB of RAM. So if your computer tells you that you don't have enough space to install a program, you will need delete files from your hard disk that you don't need or buy an additional hard drive. If your computer says there is not enough memory to run a certain program, you will need to upgrade your memory by buying more RAM. Knowing the difference between these two types of hardware can save you precious time and money. hope this helps

Answer 3

The hard drive of a computer is where the information/data is been stored. It is like a permanent data storage device that can store large volumes of data. Ranges from like 2GB to any amount this days.
A memory or RAM(Random Access Memory) is a memory chip on the computer that allows the processor to interact with the Hard drive. When you open applications or do stuffs on your computer, those applications are running on your RAM. It is only when you save that it copies back to the hard drive. When you open a file, the RAM creates a copy of it from the Harddrive (HD) after the changes, when you save it reflects those changes back to the HD. RAM are called volatile storage devices because if by any means there is power outage without saving your work. All the information on the RAM is gone. The RAM is very fast just like the processor whereas the HD isnt. So, the RAM interacts between the processor and the HD.
**Both the RAM and HD have the same measurements i.e. bytes
In computing 8bits = 1 byte; 1000bytes = 1KiloByte(KB); 1000KB = 1MegaByte(MB); 1000MB=1GigaB; 1000GB=1TeraB; and it goes on like that. So the size of the HD and the RAM are measured like this and the higher it is the poweful and expensive they are.
The bigger the RAM the faster your computer will be, and the bigger the HD the larger the amount of data you will be able to store on the computer. Hope you are okay with this. If not, I will still be glad to help.

Answer 4

Elementary answer: You have a closet where you store your clothes (hard drive), but you only wear one outfit at a time (memory). You want a big closet (hard drive) to store more clothes, and you want to wear accessories, etc. with your outfit, so you need more memory. You need a large hard drive to store computer programs and files. You need a lot of memory to work with those individual programs and files. BTW many people get the two confused because hard drives or hard discs (as they are sometimes called) have only been affordable within the last 20 years. And yes, when you open Word or any other program, this is loaded from the hard disc into the computer's memory. If you are typing along and do not save your file, if power fails, you may have lost what you were doing. If you have saved your work, the file you are working on goes to the hard drive and is saved should you lose power. Hope this helps.

Answer 5

First , the hard drive is also memory. However , there are many types of memory . The Hard drive stores information even when the computer is switched off whereas the memory on the computer is short term memory that can be easily reached by the main calculating portion of the computer when it needs it fast. The memory on the hard drive ( though bigger) takes longer to get to, as well as to get from. So the computer has a small part of memory on the mother board for easy access and a much bigger portion of memory on the hard drive. The on board memory is like a temporary place for the main computing part of the machine to store and retrieve stuff it needs while it is working on programs you want, whereas the Hard drive is where all the programs and data are stored even those that you are not using at this time.

Answer 6

The speed of a computer depends upon thre RAM which is a part of mother board. Hard drive is a storeage device that simly holds the data. The RAM accases the required data and displays in the monitor. The word RAM memory ex. 126Mb 252Mb 504Mb indicates the RAM capacity. I can give you a link that deals with hardware problems. Some hard drive problems can be easily fixed yourself by using easily available tools. I found the info at http://fixit.in useful

Answer 7

Hard drive is STORAGE - i.e. the amount of data that your computer can hold on a permenant basis - until you manually delete it. Memory is short term - it's the amount of data your computer can process at one time i.e. if you are playing a game on your computer then the graphics and information has to be stored in the memory as you play and kept active until you close the application or save that data to your hard drive. the bigger the memory the more powerful your machine is at handling large amounts of active data - you can have more programmes running at ones and handling larger files.

Answer 8

Ok what the ram does is it holds the computer code before it goes to the CPU
The Hard Drive is where your operating system and personal files are.
Also The Cpu Is like the brain and heart Because the code being the vessels and the vessels being the ram.

Answer 9

Your hard drive is STORAGE size....

Your memory is 'volatile' - which means if you turned off your computer or it lost power, you would LOSE what you see or what you've been doing..... rule of thumb is that more is better.

A gig of memory is becoming standard... which means that the computer will be able to 'do many different things and view different things' that WILL NOT be stored on the hard drive..... it is work "done in memory".... the more memory... the more you can do.

Answer 10

40g of hard drive is your total storage space for files (mp3s, etc)

1 gb of memory is how fast your computer is going to perform. The 1 gb of memory is on your CPU or your Central Processing Unit. The more memory this has, the fastest it can perform tasks.