Is RAM the same as hard drive storage?

When upgrading computers, one of the fears people have is losing their data. Sometimes when upgrading, people have to replace an entire memory module to achieve the increase in RAM they'd like. There's a misunderstanding that when you take out the memory, all your files will go with it. Fortunately, this is not the case. Files are permanently stored on the hard drive while the memory is a temporary storage location.

Computer memory is referred to as DRAM. This stands for dynamic random access memory, which means when the computer power is turned off, all the information in the memory is lost. So, what is it used for? Well, it helps speed up the processes of the computer. It serves as a temporary storage and retrieval point for data so that it doesn't have to be written and read from the hard drive every time an application needs data. So, basically RAM temporarily stores data used very often so it doesn't have to be searched for everytime it's needed. This also explains why there's a major slow down when your computer runs out of RAM. When there's no more RAM space, the computer must use an area of the hard drive (referred to as the cache) to serve as RAM, which majorly slows things down.

Click here to read more on how memory works.