by John Pieza
I was just talking to a friend about the difference between memory and storage. She recently got message on her Mac that told her that her startup disk was almost full. Someone told her to upgrade the memory which she did, but she still got the disk is almost full warning. I explained the difference between memory, also called RAM (Random Access Memory), and storage (the hard drive) using an analogy told to me by one of my students at the Apple store many years ago.
If you think of your computer like a kitchen, then memory (RAM) is like the counter space and the hard drive (storage) is like the cabinets, drawers, and refrigerator. The more counter space you have, the more things you can do at once. The more storage space you have the more tools, ingredients, and appliances you can have at your disposal, and the more finished work you can keep for later (like a cake or jello). Therefore, the more memory you have the more things you can do at once, like check email, browse websites, listen to music, write a letter, etc. With more hard drive (storage) space you can save more emails, music, and letters for later as well as store more tools (applications) to create them.
So, my friend is buying an external hard drive to use for storing her music and photos. She will erase the pictures and music from her startup disk (the internal hard drive also known as the Macintosh HD) to free up some valuable storage space.