Computer Memory...

[AJMD429]

....so you go buy a laptop computer and want a bunch of memory, and it costs LOTS more....but you can often get the same amount of memory in a 'flash drive' for less money than the additional memory will add to the cost of the laptop....that doesn't make sense, especially since it seems almost better to have that memory in a compact, detachable, portable, form....

????

[AmBraCol]

Are you referring to the hard drive? Or to the RAM? A flash drive does nothing for your RAM, but is a great way to keep files you don't access frequently, as well as providing a way to have backups of your info.

Here's a way to visualize the various kinds of memory on the computer.

The Hard Drive is your warehouse. That's where you store your tools and materials.

The RAM is your workshop. That's where you carry your tools and materials to in order to work with/on them.

The CPU is your brain. That's what determines how fast your work goes through the workshop. If your workshop is too small, it's crowded and you've got to spend time moving tools and materials between your warehouse and your workshop.

The warehouse part of the equation can be expanded by using external drives of various kinds. Or you can even set up a network attached storage solution that allows you to access a hard drive that's attached to your network and thus is available to all your computers and devices.

Personally, I like having both a large hard drive to store my files on and also external drives to which I can backup my files. Each year I start a new document folder labeled with the year. Inside that I've got folders for a variety of types of documents, from work/ministry related to personal items. Pictures and videos are the same, although the sub folders end up labeled in chronological order, year, month, day, event. 2018-06-07-RandomEvent being an example. This allows me to quickly locate the folder in which a particular picture or set of pictures is. Also have folders for "2018-Colombia" or "2018-USA" to further organize the pics.

Copying these folders over to a new hard drive ensures that I've got multiple copies of the documents/videos/pictures - all in order and easily sorted through.

Others, of course, have different systems. This one works for me.

[Woodtroll]

I like that explanation, Paul, thank you. It makes it easy for simplistic minds like mine to understand.

[AJMD429]

Makes sense to me too.

It seems like the ideal would be to have a fairly large working memory in your computer so you can multi-task, and enough 'disk' memory to hold the programs, but the data go on removable memory so it is more secure, easy to duplicate if needed, and so on.

I just got to thinking about this because I plan to get an inexpensive 'DOS' laptop so I can download my photos off of my Android phone. I've tried all sorts of 'file transfer' programs that claim they let a Mac talk-to and 'manage' files on an Android, and so far, out of six or seven such programs, NONE have been able to reliably and easily transfer all the photos. They either can't see the photos on the memory card in the phone, or something, but every one of them leaves some photos (sometimes almost randomly) behind.

So......I either need to get an iPhone (expensive and a pain to convert since I'm used to the Android), or a DOS laptop (cheap, and I've used them before and they are easy to navigate compared to the Mac) for just my photo stuff. Maybe put music on it too, since the Windows music programs I used to use seemed far easier than the Mac one that came on my machine.

Too much 'automated' stuff and too much 'interconnectivity to the cloud' these days for my taste.... (or skill level)....

[Rusty]

Some time ago I bought 2, 2 terabyte solid state hard drives for less than $100 each. I use them for storing photos. I ave one to my sister in law who loves to scan old family photos.

[vancelw]

Makes sense to me too.

It seems like the ideal would be to have a fairly large working memory in your computer so you can multi-task, and enough 'disk' memory to hold the programs, but the data go on removable memory so it is more secure, easy to duplicate if needed, and so on.

Removeable memory like flash cards or USB drives are much slower than Hard Drives. Accessing large files could take a lot longer than you are used to.
I have had more memory cards fail than I have had hard drives fail, and hard drives are recoverable in most instances if the data on them is important enough to spend the time and money. If it is that important, you should have it backed up and sync-ed anyway.

Some time ago I bought 2, 2 terabyte solid state hard drives for less than $100 each. I use them for storing photos. I ave one to my sister in law who loves to scan old family photos.

Solid state is the way to go now. for reliable, fast removeable drives.
I'm old-school. Super important archives (like old family photos, living wills, power-of-attorney) go on DVD or CD and in the media safe inside the gun safe. Just in case my hard drive and backup drive die at the same time or I have a fire.

[mickbr]

Too much 'automated' stuff and too much 'interconnectivity to the cloud' these days for my taste.... (or skill level)....

Me too, and too many rubbish upgrades. We had processors powerful enough to create a typed document in the 90's, could reproduce photographs around the same time, stream videos effectively a couple years after that. Now we have computers 100x more powerful but I still need to upgrade it every couple years or it struggles to open the 'latest versions' of the above....

[David]

Some time ago I bought 2, 2 terabyte solid state hard drives for less than $100 each. I use them for storing photos. I ave one to my sister in law who loves to scan old family photos.

I hate to sort of disagree but if you bought 2TB SSD's for $100 sometime ago was it out of the back of a truck on the on-ramp?

SSD's are starting to drop but there's no legitimate 2TB SSD drive you can buy for $100, sure they weren't SATA or possibly SAS?
You can probably get a low quality 2TB SSD now for around $300 but it's not one I would count on unless I had it mirrored.

Not long ago SSD was $1 per GB i.e. 2TB $2,000, might be able to find one in the $500 and change now.
Flash is quickly pushing the price of SSD down, flash screams but not through a USB

I buy a whole lot of disk, I threw away nearly 13,000 (working) 1TB drives 2 years ago and the 2TB's are next.
It's just to small for real data anymore, most manufactures have 14TB drives now, I put one in my machine the other day to test it.