Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: Using a RAM disk to make CAT tools faster
Poster: Oliver Walter
Post title: Meaning of RAM
I imagine some people don't know what RAM means in the computer context. It's an acronym for Random-Access Memory. It has that name to indicate that the computer can read or write any randomly chosen address within that memory and that will always take the same time. This contrasts with, for example, magnetic tape (rarely or never used today), where, to read or write a location in that memory, the device (tape drive) has to be wound all the way from its current position to the position where the data is to be read or written.
A hard-disk drive (HDD) is, as I see it, nearly but not really random-access because to access a specified block of data (HDD data is read or written in blocks, typically 512 bytes each) the read/write head has to move to the required track and then wait for the disk to rotate until the required sector (data block) is at the right position for the head to read or write data from or to it.
See, for example: [url removed] (disk_drive)
Topic: Using a RAM disk to make CAT tools faster
Poster: Oliver Walter
Post title: Meaning of RAM
I imagine some people don't know what RAM means in the computer context. It's an acronym for Random-Access Memory. It has that name to indicate that the computer can read or write any randomly chosen address within that memory and that will always take the same time. This contrasts with, for example, magnetic tape (rarely or never used today), where, to read or write a location in that memory, the device (tape drive) has to be wound all the way from its current position to the position where the data is to be read or written.
A hard-disk drive (HDD) is, as I see it, nearly but not really random-access because to access a specified block of data (HDD data is read or written in blocks, typically 512 bytes each) the read/write head has to move to the required track and then wait for the disk to rotate until the required sector (data block) is at the right position for the head to read or write data from or to it.
See, for example: [url removed] (disk_drive)