Not to be confused with defragmenting you hard drive, fragmented memory can only be fixed by doing a complete power-off shut down of your computer, then restarting.

RAM memory is where all your programs reside during the time you are using (running) them. As you open a program, or use a feature of the program, like the spell checker feature in your word-processor, the program or feature is loaded into memory. When you stop using a program’s feature, or close the program all together, it should release all of the RAM memory it used while it was loaded and running, thus making that memory available for the next program that you elect to load. The problem is that many programs don’t release their memory cleanly. Many programs, when closed, will leave fragments of themselves in the RAM memory. The next program that loads, even the same program you closed earlier, must be loaded in another part of the memory. Little by little, as the day goes on, and as you open and close programs, or use features of these programs, the useable (free un-fragmented) memory becomes smaller and smaller. Eventually you may see the System is dangerously low in resources message, or it may get so fragmented that it can’t even display the warning message, and your computer just hangs or freezes.

Will adding more memory fix this problem? Well – Yes and no. If you have a small amount of RAM (32 megabytes or less) adding another 64 or 128 megabytes may not only help this problem, but will usually make your computer run much faster. If you have 128 megabytes or more of RAM, adding more memory will probably not speed up your computer but may delay the onset of the “Resources Low” messages or the time between hangs. If you leave your computer on 24 hours a day, you can expect to run out of usable (un-fragmented memory) eventually, even if you have 1,000 megabytes of RAM. If you have 128 megabytes of RAM, or more, the best thing you can do about memory fragmentation problems is to shut down your computer each night.

Some programs, or specific versions of particular programs, suffer more fragmentation problems than others. If you shut your computer down each night, and have 128 megs of memory, but still suffer fragmented memory related hangs, or other problems, you may be able to extend the amount of time you can use your computer by adding more memory, or fix the root of the problem by installing the latest version of the program(s) that are causing the problem.

Internal fragmentation occurs when storage is allocated without intention to use it.This space is wasted. While this seems foolish, it is often accepted in return for increased efficiency or simplicity. The term “internal” refers to the fact that the unusable storage is inside the allocated region but is not being used.

For example, in many file systems, each file always starts at the beginning of a cluster, because this simplifies organization and makes it easier to grow files. Any space left over between the last byte of the file and the first byte of the next cluster is a form of internal fragmentation called file slack or slack space.Slack space is a very important source of evidence in computer forensic investigation.These clips describe an analogy of a slack space.

Author Bio: Vladimir Petrov – Chief Technology Advisor www.minleys.net

Category: Computers and Technology
Keywords: ram,ram memory,memory fragmentation,ram modules