Pci-e/usb Ram

[ScotsmanCalledPaddy]

Hi all.

I have a laptop which is in dire need of more RAM but, alas, no room for it.

The question is can I get a PCI-E card or a USB stick which will act like RAM as opposed to acting like another hard drive?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Saab Dastard]

In a word - no.

NV Flash RAM is a different animal to the volatile RAM modules that comprise main memory.

The read / write and refesh time is an order of magnitude slower than RAM - not to speak of the USB or PCI bus speeds.

HOWEVER - if you are prepared to dedicate a USB solid-state device and ensure that it is permanently attached to the PC, you could try putting your system paging file there. It "should" be faster than the physical disk, thereby improving pagefile reads & writes., plus you would recover some disk space!!

You would need to ensure that you always had the device connected at system startup, never "ejected" it and didn't mess around with other detachable devices (e.g. CD / DVD players) that would screw up the drive lettering.

Not tried it myself, so I can't guarantee that Windows will let you do it.

If you try it, let me know!

SD

[ScotsmanCalledPaddy]

Cheers SB.

Give it a week or two and I shall let you know how I got on.

[planecrazy.eu]

Im up for trying that too, i have an old laptop, same situation and have a space gig memory stick...

I was not aware that the access speeds would be greater with USB than the HDD itself, but i always learn something new when i come here...

Would the same apply if i installed a cheap second drive as i have a spare bay and i have seen the ibm hdds on ebay for 10-20 second hand for a 1 gig one...

Just trying to put some life back in the old laptop, i use it for linux now... So i guess that makes the whole process void doesnt it... Linux uses swap right? Can the same be done...

[Saab Dastard]

planecrazy,

I mean that the access speeds of Flash RAM are faster than HDD.

A solid-state device is always going to be faster than an electro-mechanical one.

There would be no benefit in attaching a USB HDD over the IDE HDD.

SD