virtual memory?

Question

What is it? How high can I go? Can I use my external hard drive instead because its 40gigs more then my main drive? Any info you got is great thanx:-D

Answer 1

Virtual memory is the operating system's way of using your hard drive as swap memory to add to your overall resources. Typically the OS and programs go to your actual RAM first and then when certain situations arise virtual memory is used. It can go as high as your hard drive, but I'm not sure if you can set it to use another drive or not. You can right-click My Computer and go to Properties to find a tab with settings regarding virtual memory. If yours is getting up to 40GB that's outrageously high. It shouldn't ever go over 2 to 3GB - sounds like something else may be wrong or your setting is manually set to high.

Answer 2

Don't use your external drive. It's slower than the internal one and will slow the computer down. I just keep 2gb of memory and disable virtual memory all together. There are a few programs that want it, but I don't have any of them. Most people who set the virtual memory size instead of letting Windows handle it set it at 1.5 times the amount of Ram they have.

Answer 3

When all your ram gets used up it starts to use your hard drive as an alternative or an extension of your ram. But it's not nearly as fast as ram. Unless windows is telling you that it's too low then you have enough. Adding more won't make anything go faster. It only uses what it needs regardless of how big you make the setting. putting it on an external hard rive will only make it slower than it already is because it usually takes even longer to transfer data on external drives.

Answer 4

Virtual memory, as the poster above noted, is used by your computer to swap things in and out of physical memory. It must be on a fixed drive, so you can't put it on the external drive, and while you technically can set it above 4GB, Windows OS can't apply memory addresses for many applications above the first 4GB so setting it higher than that won't give you any benefit.

Answer 5

You have HiMem and USRmem and there are others, basically its a Hard Drive Swap File. Winders changed the name to Page File, I have no idea why. But here is the skinny, To make a Usefull Page File on a windows box , partion or add a Hard Drive and Partition it Make a 2gig partition, put NO files or Folders on this partition, no OS no nothing, this partition is just used for the Page Swap.
Read about how to and how it works at:
http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2006/2006-11-09.htm#2
http://www.langa.com/backups/backups(9).htm
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/PageDefrag.mspx
So in answer,yes you can, partition it, (you can make usually 4 or 5 partitions on a HD) but make one for just the Page/Swap file as it is explained.

Answer 6

You would only increas it if you are experiancing disk thrashing. So your applications run a little faster.