My friend G and I were sipping this marvelous coffee (from Harrods London U.K.) in his fantastic library the other day, leisurely discussing how relating to computers was an art, when I shyly ventured a direct question: “G, what is the difference between RAM and a HARDDRIVE? Are they basically the same thing?” Without saying anything, G walked right out of the library and for the next few minutes began pacing the main hall of his house. Upon re-entering the library, G immediately launched into a most unusual commentary. What follows are the notes I assembled afterwards.
Think of all the stuff you own and where you keep it Sweetbits (G calls me “Sweetbits” because of how keenly I listen to compu-anything – he says that I don’t just listen with my head but it is as if my belly had ears.) Basically, you keep it in your house. Some of your stuff should not be in your house – it’s only there because it fits, perhaps because you have a basement or a garage. Like that giant stuffed camel at the far end of your basement. You’ve only seen it once in your life, but thank-goodness you had room for it.
A HARDDRIVE is like your house. A big HARDDRIVE is like having a house with a basement. They are great because you can store all of your photos of your camel. Plus all the songs you sang the day the camel arrived: they can fit on your big HARDDRIVE.
When you leave your house, you fill your pockets with some of your stuff. But not just any old stuff, not your camel, only what you’re going to use on your outing. You might put your keys, your wallet, your breath mints, your hanky in your pocket. The stuff that you use, you want close to you. Like your watch for instance: you’ll even keep it on your wrist, so your eyes can find it quickly.
RAM (which means: Right Away Ma’am) is like your computer’s pockets. When you command your computer to run your Firefox browser, it immediately stuffs Firefox (which had been luxuriating on the HARDDRIVE) into its RAM (its pockets.)
Imagine if, when you departed from your house, you left your watch behind and every time you wanted to check the time you had to go running back home!
Well, if your computer’s pockets are full (ie. it’s already running plenty of programs), and you command it to run a program that is not sitting in its pockets (RAM), it in effect has to empty some pockets; run back to its house (HARDDRIVE;) fetch that program you asked for; stuff it in its pockets and proceed. When you then switch to a program that isn’t in its pockets anymore, the nightmare continues.
So that is why it is important to wear overalls … no, sorry, what I mean is: that is why it is important to have lots of RAM. These days you want at least 2GBs (GB means: Great Big).
Now, at the end of the day, you empty your pockets. But you don’t empty your house. You might empty your trash that’s in your house, but furniture does not regularly get tossed out on the lawn at the end of the day. The same applies to computers: when you turn them off, the RAM is dumped. The HARDDRIVE is not.