What is memory storage in computer

One of the most confusing sets of terms in everyday computer usage is “‘Memory’ & ‘Storage’.” People often use one term when they mean to refer to the other thing. It can be confusing because both memory and storage are measured in the same units: bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, etc. This is because both memory and storage are places to hold your data, but they do very different things with it.

Table of Contents Show

Types of storage device
Further Readings:

The two components that ‘memory’ & ‘storage’ refer to are RAM & the hard drive.

The memory is known as RAM. It is is a part of your computer that it uses while it’s powered on. Your computer stores everything that it’s thinking about in RAM. If you’re running a program, it’s in RAM. If you’re looking at a webpage, it’s in RAM. RAM contains everything that’s currently going on with your computer. And when RAM is in a computer that isn’t powered, the RAM is empty. It’s just waiting for something to think about.

The more memory your computer has, the more it’s able to think about at the same time. More RAM allows you to use more complex programs and more of them.

Storage’ refers to long-term storage. Everything that your computer knows, but isn’t thinking about, is in storage, written on the Hard Disk Drive (HDD). This is a permanent type of storage: hard drives can be unplugged and contain the same information as when they’re plugged in or turned on. Nothing actually gets changed on the hard drive: it gets pulled off the hard drive, into RAM/Memory. While it’s in memory, you as the user can change it. When you save the information, it gets sent back to the hard drive storage in a different version.

More hard drive storage allows you to store more things on your computer. However, it rarely affects your computer’s performance. A computer with 1 gigabyte of RAM will work at the same speed whether it has 2 gigabytes of storage or 2000 gigabytes.

Visit The Nerds: Having hardware computer problems? Come into our Sacramento computer repair shop or one of our other locations across California and Oregon to get your computer fixed today! Having software problems? We can help you with that too, no matter your location with our online computer repair service.

Home / Hardware & Software / Memory and Storage

Primary memory or temporary storage is called RAM. RAM stands for Random Access Memory. RAM is stored on the motherboard, in modules that are called DIMMs (Dual Inline Memory Module). A DIMM is called a dual inline module because it has two independent rows of pins, one on each side. A DIMM memory module has either 168, 184, 240, or 288 pins. The DIMM is installed on the motherboard in memory slots. Any given motherboard can have varying numbers of memory slots. The average motherboard will have between 2 and 4 memory slots.

In order for data or a program to run on a computer, it first needs to be loaded into RAM, so the data or program is first stored on the hard drive, and is then loaded from the hard drive into RAM. Once it is loaded into RAM, the CPU can now access the data or run the program. When the amount of available memory is too low, it might not be able to hold all the data that the CPU needs. When this happens, some other data has to be kept on those slower hard drives, in order to compensate for the low memory. So instead of a data going from RAM to the CPU, it has to do extra work by going back to the hard drive; when this happens, it effectively slows down the whole computer. To solve this problem, all you need to do is increase the amount of RAM in the computer. By increasing the amount of memory available, more data can be loaded into the faster RAM, without the necessity of constantly accessing the slower hard drive. The result: a computer that performs better. This serves as an explanation as to why a computer with more RAM performs better than a computer with less RAM.

RAM requires constant electrical power to store data. If the power is turned off, the data is erased.

RAM also comes in different types:

DRAM – Dynamic RAM. DRAM is a kind of memory that contains capacitors, which must be constantly refreshed with electricity.
SDRAM – Synchronous DRAM. It is used today in RAM DIMMs. It operates synchronously with the system clock, and is faster than DRAM.

Storage

Storage refers to a medium of storage in which information remains whole until it is removed or overwritten. Whether the computer has power or not is of no importance to the amount of storage available.

Types of storage device

Hard drive – a hard drive is a high capacity, self-contained storage device, containing a read-write mechanism, plus one or more hard disks hidden inside a sealed unit. This piece of equipment is also frequently referred to as a hard disk drive (DVV). Standard hard drives spin at 7200 RPM (rotations per minute). Slower hard drives spin at 5400 RPM, while the fastest drives currently available spin at 15,000 RPM. The faster your drive can spin, the faster you can search through your folders and word documents, plus whatever you have stored at those locations. However, the downfall of hard drives is that as you use them they wear out, and as such have a maximum lifespan beyond which they won’t be able to function.
Solid State Drive (SDD) – a non-volatile storage device that stores persistent data on solid state flash memory. SSD are faster than hard drives, as well as being more expensive.
2 SSD – just like a regular SSD, but plugged directly to the motherboard. Again, this is very fast, and as a result of its speed is also expensive.
Hybrid drives – a combination of solid state drives and hard drives, best described as somewhere between the two.

Memory is not the same as storage. Storage is where the majority of the information is kept and stored. While it’s great to have a lot of information, it’s hard to actually use it and keep stored at the same time. This is where memory comes into play. While memory can’t keep a lot of information at one time, it is able to retrieve relevant information that can subsequently be used by the computer when needed.

Further Readings:

Memory (RAM) and storage are both required to run a computer. They both store data,the difference is in how long the data is stored.

The main difference between computer memory and storage is that memory stores data short-term for immediate access. A computer's moment-to-moment operations are performed using short-term data access — loading applications, browsing the Web, or editing a spreadsheet. Memory is volatile storage, which means that when you turn the computer off, the data disappears. For more information on what RAM does, read here.

Storage (either a hard drive or a solid state drive) stores data long-term for permanent access. It's the component that accesses and stores your files, applications, and operating system. The storage drive is non-volatile, which means the data is stored even if you turn off the computer. For more information about solid state drives, read here. Memory and storage work in tandem with your computer's processor (CPU) to access and use data.

A Crucial SSD and RAM memory modules

The three components work together to display the program and file you want, and record your changes.

The storage drive permanently stores programs and files.
When data is requested, for example you open a file, the processor accesses the storage drive and transfers long-term data (the stored file) to the memory for short-term access.
As you continue working in the file, or if you switch to another program, such as email, the processor accesses data from storage the first time it's requested, or from the memory after it has been transferred from the storage drive to show you what you've requested.

How data, the CPU, storage and memory work together.

Because of how your system accesses data, the speed of your memory and storage drive plays a big role in how fast your processor is able to convert data to and from the different data types and make it usable. Because slower memory and storage components can cause data bottlenecks, it's best to upgrade one or both components. If your system seems slow, unresponsive, or sluggish compared to when you first bought it, we recommend upgrading your memory, storage, or both for optimal performance gains.