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    Can you explain the RAM and Hard Drive's file system?

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by Tangledupinblue, Jun 5, 2015.

  1. Tangledupinblue

    Tangledupinblue Notebook Enthusiast

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    Is EXT4 something which might be used as a file system of RAM, but not on a hard drive?

    And FAT32 could be used for a hard drive, but not for RAM?
     
    Tangledupinblue, Jun 5, 2015
    #1
  2. KCETech1

    KCETech1 Notebook Prophet

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    both are hard drive file systems. ( or USB drives etc )

    ext3 and 4 are predominantly for Linux and such, FAT32 is an antiquated but functional file system from WAY back in in the windows era ( Windows 98 I believe ) and very common on smaller USB drives and SD memory cards

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_system#Disk_file_systems

    RAM does not have a file system exactly it had memory allocation which is handled by either the CPU or a memory controller, BUT you can create a RAM drive in which a block of RAM can be used as a hard drive as well, but that's well out of the scope of normal use.
     
    KCETech1, Jun 5, 2015
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  3. tijo

    tijo Sacred Blame

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    If you really want to know more, what you should really look into is memory hierarchy in a computer, or in other words, how the HDD/SSD interact with RAM and the CPU.

    Other than that KCETech1 has the gist of it.

    FAT32 is antiquated at this point and has been abandoned as far as operating systems go. It's still on USB drives as it's pretty basic and you rarely see cases where FAT32 is an issue on a flash drive, but it does happen (> 4 GB files anyone?).

    RAM is volatile storage and every time you power it down, the data in is is lost, whatever gets put in RAM is there because something requested the memory and the operating system put it there. There is no set file system, etc. for RAM.
     
    tijo, Jun 5, 2015
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  4. thegh0sts

    thegh0sts Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    you must be confused with a ramdisk which lets you allocate ram as HDD space.
     
    thegh0sts, Jun 5, 2015
    #4