How Virtual Memory Works
Computer Science: OCR A Level, topic 1.3.15
How Virtual Memory Works
Virtual Memory allows us to access more memory than we have by setting aside some secondary storage space to act as extra memory.
Paging
- Memory can be split into sections called 'pages'.
- Virtual Memory works by moving these pages between the Random Access Memory (RAM) and the secondary storage.
Move pages to Hard Disk Drive (HDD)
- If a page is not being used, then we might want to put it into Virtual Memory.
- When a page is moved to the HDD and not being used, it is put into a special file called the pagefile.
- Other processes can then use the memory that we just freed in the RAM.
Move pages to RAM
- When we want to use a page again, we first need to move it back to the RAM.
- We do this by swapping the page that we want with one that is already in the RAM.
Test yourself on How Virtual Memory Works
Virtual memory moves pages between which two storage devices?
With a Windows operating system, what is the file name that contains pages that are not currently in use?