A simple memory question

[jerseyjeff]

Hi all. I had to delete all my daughter's Sims Games which were taking up about 3,000 mb of RAM in order to install my son's "The Movies" game which needed about 2400. I have already installed another 512 card in the Dell 4550 dimension so it has 1,024 DDR RAM in it already. My question is, can I buy external memory drive to add more memory in order to reinstall Sims or do I have to buy another block of internal memory. I'm not quite sure of the difference between internal memory in the machine and an external one. Or if there is any difference at all. My daughter is really pissed I deleted all her games and I need to find the space for that game ASAFP. -jj

 

[hrlow2]

The games release the memory upon being closed down. Memory is just used while playing. They DO take up space on your hard drive, but that is an entirely different matter.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

There is a difference between hard disk and RAM memory. RAM is temporary and as hrlow2 said, is only used while playing. The HDD (Hard Disk Drive) space occupied by the game is permanent until you uninstall it.

You need a new HDD. There's a huge selection out there, just take your pick. I recommend buying only Seagate or Western Digital drives though.

 

[hrlow2]

What size hard drive do you have and how much free space is remaining? Could be possible that your daughter has a reason to be POed at you. Those games can take a hugh investment of time to get built up.
On a personal note, I would never have done that to one of my children just to satisfy another one.

 

[red1776]

hi Jersey,
Hrlow2 answer is correct, the only reason im chiming in is I wonder if you are actually talking about hard drive space since you mentioned "external memory".
the 1024 you say you have of ddr is 1024MB's. so it would be impossible for sims to use 3000mb's. your system will attempt allocate ram according to how much you have and if you have to little, performance will suffer.
If you however are confusing ram and HD space, and had to remove 3000mb's to imstall a 2400mb's game. you either have a very small hard drive, or your drive is to full. it is a rule of thumb to leave 10% of your HDD as free space for page file, operating system task's, virtual memory etc. or performance will suffer or just crash. if that is the case you need to clean up your HDD to free up space or add a HDD. and yes there are external HDD's available
hope that helped

 

[red1776]

when i started my reply, Hrlow2's first post was the only one showing...oh well

 

[jerseyjeff]

I think I get it...

So bottom line is I need an HDD, or what I would call an external hard drive, in order to store the Sims Games. This is separate and distinct from the 1,024 of DDR that is installed in the machine, which has more to do with the functioning of the applications. Yes?

 

[red1776]

hi Jeff,
Yes the HDD and the DDR (ram) are completely different. The HDD (hard disk drive) is 'permanent' storage, meaning that when you power your machine down and start it up again, the data is still there. the 1024 of ddr is R.A.M (random access memory) data is stored and accessed there only during the use of the application. when you power down, or exit the program, the data held in the RAM is wiped out and the memory is made available to the system (at least the vast majority of it). as far as which one has more to do with applications, I believe you are asking about performance, at this stage its kind of irrelevent because your HDD is already to full (remember you need to leave 10% free on your hard drive or you will have a huge performance problem) so you need an additional HDD to put your games on. that said, one of the best ways to increase performance (and cheapest) is to add RAM to your system. 2 GB's is generally regarded as a good amount of ram for good performance. but my point was about your question was that if your HDD is to full, or you have too little RAM you will have performance issues. both can be found very inexpensivly these days. just an added note; when you are shopping HDD's, make note of what type off HDD interface you have on your Motherboard, IDE,SATA you may have both.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

You can get an internal or external one. That is entirely upto you.

For the internal drive, you need to know what interface you have, as described in the post above. For the external one, you can buy whatever you want.

 

[hrlow2]

Still have not seen how much space is free on your hard drive. May be enough so that you won't need to buy another drive, although the extra space is always good to have. Just be sure that it is compatible with your machine.

 

[CCT]

You could get a little more guidance by giving us a system report from Everest.

Download and run Everest Home (it is free):

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4181.html

Once you download it, click on it and let it install and then run it from the icon on your desktop. Click on file, preferences, report and uncheck the 'include debug information in the report' box. People rarely want to see that stuff.

Click on the + sign beside 'Computer', then on 'Summary', then go to the VERY Top of the screen and click on 'report'.

Note: the 'Very Top' isn't one line down, it means what it says.

Cursor over 'quick report-summary' and then click on 'plain text' and then click on 'save to file' and change the 'save in' folder to 'Desktop' and then click 'Save'.

Clear all your open windows and on the Desktop click on that 'report.txt' icon - this will open it in a text editor (probably Notepad) and then copy and paste it to here.

 

[jerseyjeff]

thanks for the memory

Thank you one and all for your kind help. I will do a little more digging on the machine. I am not home much and it's in constant use so things drag on a little. I am planning on buying an HDD in any case. Whatever memory I had available, the 2400 mb that "The Movies" required had no where to go. Many thanks.

 

[hrlow2]

Have looked up the requirements for the Movies game for PC. It requires 256MB of RAM, but 2457MB of free space on the hard drive.