1.2.4 - Virtual Memory

What is Virtual Memory?

Virtual memory is a technique where we use secondary storage as it were RAM.

What is the name of the sections in which Memory can get split into?

Pages.

Why would you move pages from RAM to HDD?

When a page is not currently being used, it might be placed into Virtual Memory on the HDD, specifically stored in a special file called the pagefile. This frees up space in RAM for active tasks so other processes can use said freed-up memory.

Why would you move pages from HDD to RAM?

When you need to use a page that was moved to the HDD, the page must be moved back into RAM. If RAM is full, another page might be swapped out. This is because only data in RAM can be actively used by the CPU.