What is the difference between memory (RAM) and hard drive?
Put simply, memory is used to store information for the general running of the PC when it is on as it is fast and efficient. Your hard drive is used for long term storage of data and is slow but has a large capacity. For a computer to work on a document for instance, the document must be loaded from the hard drive into the memory before you can use the computer to make alterations to the document. If you do not have enough memory then the computer has to constantly read and write snippets of data from the hard drive to the memory. Since this is a slow process, it can seriously affect the performance of your computer. A memory upgrade is often a cheap and easy way to improve the performance of a computer and is usually a better choice than a processor upgrade.
