Unit 6 Analysis 2: Memory Cost
1. Your OS will use the hard drive as a "swap file" or virtual memory, if your PC runs out of RAM while you are working away. Using your hard drive as memory causes a serious performance hit, as hard drives are slower than RAM. You must have enough memory, adding more does not help if you are not doing anything that needs more memory. Today, a modern PC and a modern OS need about 4 gigs to achieve this for most standard users. You want enough RAM so the OS doesn't start using the hard drive as memory.
2. The user with the three 200 GB hard disks has the advantage, because he can utilize all three disks simultaneously, while the other one can only use that single disk. The user with the three disks will probably be able to do more, faster.
3. A typical home computer user would require RAID technology if they use their computer as a home office and have data that is invaluable or irreplaceable. The option is becoming more popular because of the speed increase, and or data reliability you achieve when you set RAID up. A typical business user would use RAID to provide data redundancy, fault tolerance, increased capacity, and increased performance. Data redundancy protects the data from hard drive failures. This benefit is good for companies or individuals that have critical or important data to protect, or just anyone that's paranoid about losing data. Fault tolerance goes hand in hand with redundancy in providing a better over-all storage system. RAID also provides increased capacity by combining multiple drives.