is it possible to use a slave drive as ram?

i have a computer that runs very slow and new ram sticks for an upgrade are out of my reach financially so i was looking for an alternative

since i heard that windows uses part of the hard drive as ram anyway (virtual memory) and that using the local hard drive for ram slows down the computer even more since it makes the drive spin faster when being used for both local storage and ram i was wondering that if i use a slave drive as a second memory source for ram it wouldn't have that problem and have a desirable amount of ram, and how do i allocate the size of memory i would like to use on the hard drive as ram

 

What version of Windows are you running?

If it's Windows 7 or Vista, you can purchase a USB flash drive for about $20 that will do ReadyBoost, turning part or all of the USB drive into memory. If you buy one, be sure the USB drive is certified fast enough for ReadyBoost - some cheaper/slower drives won't work.

Hope this helps.

 

Older versions of Windows already do that, it is called the swap file.

Older Windows like 98 use to beat the crap out of the hard drive, trading RAM for disk space, not a way to improve performance really.

 

Actually all Windows version do that..

 

Ditto, on what 'foogoo' just said.

Minimize the crap running in the background on your computer (any PC and any OS) and you will free up a lot of ram for use by programs. Turn off all services and TSR's that you don't absolutely Need to have running all the time. I just do that, for all my customers as a part of my PC tune up.
In XP, I can shut off 24 services and in the Startup folder, there should be NOTHING that's not needed to run the computer. All reminders, updaters, etc. should be shut off, along with crapola like CTFMON.

The idea of Virtual Memory (Swapfile or Pagefile) was started way back when ram memory was worth as much as the computer itself. But, that's no longer the case. In comparison, ram is dirt cheap today. WWW.Crudial.com is the best place to find out what you can upgrade to and how much it will cost. You can even buy new ram right there and be sure it's the right stuff for your PC. I do that all the time for my customers.

You really don't want to use the Pagefile for anything you don't have to. Any hard drive, even the fastest ones, are in the neighborhood of 1000 times SLOWER than ram.
And it makes no difference What HD you use. because they are all like that.

I even use a registry Tweak to load the Kernel (critical part of the OS) into ram on boot up, just to get it up off of the Slow hard drive. That greatly increases performance. One simple little registry tweak is all that takes.

So please.....forget about using hard drive space as ram. That's 100% counter productive.

Happy Holidays Mates!
The Shadow :cool

 

Using ReadyBoost is a good idea, even a flash drive as small as 1GB helps a ton. However, do not disable your pagefile, as it is generally accepted as a good idea to leave it on and let Windows manage it.

It's like The Shadow said, the cheapest and easiest way to improve performance is disabling unneeded background services.