How to Use Ssd As RAM

Written by Nicole Levine, MFA

Last Updated: June 13, 2023 Fact Checked

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This wikiHow teaches you how to use extra space on your Solid State Drive (SSD) as virtual RAM on a Windows PC. If you have a Mac with an internal SSD drive, macOS will automatically manage your virtual memory settings.

Things You Should Know

• You can set an external SSD to act as RAM on a Windows computer in File Explorer.
• Your Mac will automatically manage your memory settings.

Steps

1. 1
   Right-click This PC. It’s the icon on your Windows desktop that looks like a computer. A menu will appear.
2. 2
   Click Properties.
3. 3
   Click Advanced system settings. It’s on the left side of the window. This opens the System Properties dialog.

   • Enter your administrator password if prompted.
4. 4
   Click Settings under the “Performance” header. It’s the first “Settings” button on the “Advanced” tab. A list of performance options will appear.
5. 5
   Click the Advanced tab. It’s the second tab on the window.
6. 6
   Click Change…. It’s under the “Virtual memory” header. This opens the Virtual Memory dialog, which is where you can configure how much of your hard drive will be used as RAM.
7. 7
   Un-check “Automatically manage paging file size for all drives.” Now you can edit the options on this screen.
8. 8
   Click your SSD drive. This selects the drive as the location for your paging file (virtual RAM).
9. 9
   Select System managed size.

   • If you have specific instructions for how large of a page file you need, select Custom size instead, then enter the minimum and maximum page file size in the appropriate blanks.
10. 10
    Click Set.
11. 11
    Click OK. A pop-up message will appear, letting you know that you’ll need to restart your computer before the changes will take effect.
12. 12
    Click OK. Your PC will now shut down and restart. When it comes back up, it will be using part of your SSD drive as virtual RAM—this should speed up your computer.