Hi all,

Hopefully this doesn't cause any eyes to roll. lol

I have an older laptop that has 512MB of DRAM. I got curious as to whether I could use a 2GB smart card that rides in a USB carrier as RAM. I did some googling and I don't see exactly what I'm looking for. Does anyone here know of a method of using a USB flash drive (which is what the above combo constitutes) as RAM?

Thanks in advance.

I doubt you can use it as RAM, but you could probably use it as swap.

No worries, there are no dumb questions.

The answer to your question is something called "Swap" that is built into all Linux distros. It works just like Virtual Memory in Windows to create a type of "overflow" allowing you to run applications that are too big for your actual RAM.

You can create a swap partition on the drive using a partition editor such as Gparted, then turn it on with the swapon command.

Be aware however that using a USB flash drive for this purpose will be extremely slow (and will wear out the flash memory eventually); it will not speed up your computer in any way shape or form, its only benefit would be allowing you to run memory-intensive applications or work with very large files that would not otherwise be possible with only 512mb.

I guess it really could be done. Memory and hard drive and usb are really only addresses to the OS. The main issue is if you can overcome the single purpose design of the box (all x86 boxes).

It might help to make use it as swapboost or a ram drive.

Speed is what I'm after here, so it looks like an upgrade. This old Vaio only accomodates 1GB according to the Sony website. Of course, maybe that's a Win(bl)ows issue. Don't know.

Thanks again!!!

From what I can tell from threads on this subject in the past, swap on a USB will wear it out!

I'd consider a lighter desktop environment. I've got a laptop with probably the bare minimum (or less..) spec for standard SimplyMEPIS 8.5. None the less, it runs KDE4 quicker than our far more powerful PCs at work rin Win XP... ;-> However, I installed LXDE in addition to KDE4 and when I log in with that it flies by comparison and is very usable. Especially with suitably lightweight apps too.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks Rich, it never occured to me to go with LXDE. I run Mint Helena, and have loved their implementation of the gnome desktop. But I installed LXDE and lubuntu through synaptic and logged back in, and now my machine is as fast as a brand new one.

Great piece of advice, rich. thanks.

I do like running the choice of two environments because I can get the speed with LXDE but still run my KDE apps when I want/need to either by starting them in LXDE or logging in as KDE.

Glad my suggestion helped!

The access time of each (average, DDR2 SDRAM):

RAM = 25 ns
SD card = 1 ms = 1000000 ns
HDD = 9 ms = 9000000 ns (for very fast HDD) usually more like 15000000 ns

Transfer rate:

RAM = 6400 MB/s (peak)
SD card = 20 MB/s read, 18 MB/s write (best case)
HDD = 120 MB/s (fast HDD)

No, it won't work, except as extra swap space.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...rd,2143-9.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic..._access_memory
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/sto...roundup_7.html

1 members found this post helpful.