What is the purpose of using virtual memory?

The purpose of using virtual memory is to expand the memory capacity (ie, addressing space). Generally speaking, the larger the RAM capacity of the computer, the faster the program will run. If your computer is slowing down due to a lack of free RAM, you can try to compensate by increasing virtual memory.

The operating environment of this tutorial: Windows 7 system, Dell G3 computer.

The purpose of using virtual memory is to expand the memory capacity (that is, the addressing space). Unify the main memory and external memory into a whole. From an overall point of view, the speed depends on the main memory and the capacity depends on the external memory.

Virtual Memory (Virtual Memory) makes the application think that it has continuous available memory (a continuous and complete address space), but in fact, it is usually divided into multiple physical memory fragments, and Parts are temporarily stored on external disk storage and data are exchanged when needed. Currently, most operating systems use virtual memory, such as the "virtual memory" of the Windows family; the "swap space" of Linux, etc.

All programs running in the computer need to be executed through memory. If the executed program takes up a large amount of memory, it will cause the memory to be exhausted. To solve this problem, Windows uses virtual memory technology, which allocates part of the hard disk space for memory use. When the memory is exhausted, the computer will automatically call the hard disk to act as memory to relieve memory tension. If the computer does not have enough random access memory (RAM) to run a program or operate, Windows will use virtual memory to compensate. It combines your computer's RAM and temporary space on your hard drive. When RAM runs slowly, it moves data from RAM to a space called the paging file. Moving data into a paging file frees up RAM so work can be done. Generally speaking, the larger the RAM capacity of the computer, the faster the program will run. If your computer is slowing down due to a lack of free RAM, you can try to compensate by increasing virtual memory. However, the computer reads data from RAM faster than from the hard disk, so expanding the RAM capacity (by adding memory modules) is the best choice.

Virtual memory is a part of the hard disk space used by Windows as memory. The virtual memory is actually a huge file on the hard disk. The file name is PageFile.Sys, which cannot be seen under normal circumstances. You must turn off the explorer's protection function for system files to see this file. Virtual memory is sometimes called the "page file" from the file name of this file.

Memory plays a very important role in the computer. All programs running in the computer need to be executed through the memory. If the executed programs are large or many, the memory will be exhausted. In order to solve this problem, WINDOWS uses virtual memory technology, which uses part of the hard disk space as memory. This part of the space is called virtual memory. The form of virtual memory on the hard disk is the page file PAGEFILE.SYS.

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