hard drive as RAM

[thePh@r@oh]

i have an few extra low capacity hard drives 200Mb's and such i was wondering if i could use them like RAM as some sort of swap drive or something?

[Kc2iLq]

Chances are, for HDD's that small, they'd be no more than like 3600 rpm, if even. They would make for an extremely slow swap space and for the agrivation, you might as well spend a few bucks on ram if you need it. I guess for a really old machine however, it might be acceptable.

-Kc2iLq

[chris64]

You probably could but it would be pretty slow(compared to modern 7200+rpm drive).

EDIT:
Kc2iLq beat me to it.

[thePh@r@oh]

i was afraid of that i just had these extra drives and wanted to use them for something i already have 512mb of ram and another 256 chip on the way im not lacking in the ram just anted to use these drives

[Kc2iLq]

Well, if you have more than enough RAM, you probably wouldn't even end up using the HDD's at all. I have 512 megs of RAM in my main rig and never use swap space at all. In fact, only when I'm gaming does the memory usage go as high as 300 Megs.

-Kc2iLq

[JayMan]

You could use them as a drive to store some mp3's on or something....

JayMan

[thePh@r@oh]

LOL tried that filled the drives up in no time

[cyphen]

Originally posted by thePh@r@oh
i was afraid of that i just had these extra drives and wanted to use them for something i already have 512mb of ram and another 256 chip on the way im not lacking in the ram just anted to use these drives

hmmm.. only use i can think of for a drive that old and slow is.... paperwieght. or maybe you could turn it into some kind of cool centerpice/conversation piece.

Yeah, not much in the line of "useful" for that! If you stripe 'em under NT or with promise RAID then they might be up to the speed of a newer drive. 'course that's a long way to go for not very much return!

[PresterJohn]

>if i could use them like RAM as some sort of swap drive or something

you already do...that is what your pagefile does. and thatis what c:\temp is for...

[mickwish]

If you had a drive rack bay (one that can swap drives in and out), you could use these drives as temporary storage drives. I have a couple of these old drives (170MB size) with hundreds of DOS games on them (from before I had a CD burner). Kids still check out the DOS games every now and then, despite the 3D monsters we have today.

Of course, be aware that because they are old that they might fail, so don't put anything on there you couldn't afford to lose!

Cheers
Mick

[nukes]

On the note of old drives, does Conner still make hard disks? I have a few of them ranging from 40mb to 420mb and they are still running great. If only the 75GXPs were that good

[Wizzard~Of~Ozz]

conner was bought out by seagate a long time ago.

I still have an old Maxtor 80Mb that was still working last time it was seen, I also have a 210Mb around here somewhere.

[cyphen]

I bet these will be collectors items someday...

Pack 'em up in bubblewrap + put 'em in tupperware! In 30 years they'll be worth tens of dollars!