Memory vs Hard Drive

I get a lot of questions about the difference between Memory, RAM and a Hard Disk. RAM and a Hard Disk are really just different types of Memory. It is actually quite simple, but I can understand why people would have trouble understanding the difference.

Random Access Memory (RAM) is a collection of electronic circuits that stores programs and data while your computer is running. RAM is relatively fast.  The more of your program that is able to reside in RAM the faster your computer will run. The draw back is that RAM only stores information temporarily. When you shut your computer off it forgets everything that is held in its RAM. So every time that your computer starts up, it has to load information from your Hard Drive. This leads us to what an HDD is.

A Hard Disk Drive (HDD) has the ability to store a lot more information than your RAM does. The traditional HDD is a platter or disk that is coated with a magnetic material. The magnetic material is holds the information on your HDD.  The disks spin very quickly, usually between 5400 and 7200 RPM. More expensive drives can spin up to 20,000 RPM.   The faster the disk is able to spin, the faster it can read and write the information.  The Drive also has a read head that is a magnet that is used to write and read the magnetic surface on the disks. There are newer Solid State Drives (SSD) that are much faster and work like a Pen or Flash drive.  They do not have any spinning platters or magnetic read heads.  They hold data just like the magnetic hard drives do only they are able to read and write the information much more quickly.  Since this is a physical process, the information is permanent. When you shut off your computer or lose power, the data stays there.  It is still not as fast as your RAM is but it is slowly getting there.

If you have any questions or still are not sure of the difference leave a comment and we will get the answer to you as quick as we can.