Managing Virtual Memory

Managing Virtual Memory

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In the recent century, computer systems have evolved to powerful applications that require large memory size. This has brought to a limitation in the memory sizes provided with original hardware systems (Haywood & Martha, 2008). Virtual memory is an operating system feature that has been developed that allows the moving of pages of data from RAM to the disk storage space designated for that. Virtual memory is usually used when the physical Random Access Memory gets depleted when the system is in use. The advantages of using virtual memory include high security as a result of memory separation, releasing applications from a burden of managing a common memory space, and by application of the paging technique. In addition, the virtual memory can use more memory than the physically possible memory.
In Windows operating system, the virtual memory is combined with the physical memory. When the physical RAM gets used up the operating system transfers some pages of data from the RAM to a paging file on the hard disk. Although this looks like a smart option, a computer runs faster when it is accessing data from the RAM rather than the hard disk. When you get a warning alert on a low virtual memory, you will be required to increase the lowest size of the paging file. Windows always uses the amount of installed Random Access Memory (RAM) as the standard for setting the size of the paging file (EMC Education Services, 2012). The minimum size of the paging file is equal to installed RAM size, and the maximum size equals three times the size of installed RAM.
To change virtual memory in Windows 7 operating system, a particular set of simple steps as follows. This can be completed by pressing on the windows 7 start button then navigating to a computer and then to properties (Khalidi, Yousef & Michael, 2013). You can select Advanced System Settings from the opened windowpane. If there is a prompt for...