Virtual memories are very helpful in that they free up space on the RAM. For example, if you want to run a particularly large program, then by using virtual memory, you would only store the active parts of the program on the RAM. The parts of the program that you are not using would be stored on the hard drive, and thus would not take up unnecessary space on the RAM.
The downside of virtual memory is that
if a computer becomes overly dependent on it, then the computer system would
be slowed down, rather than speeded up. This is because if too much information
is stored on the hard drive, then the computer would have to constantly swap
the information from the RAM to the hard drive and vice versa.
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