Computers- I get what memory is, but what is swap?

Question

Is it tied to memory or something else entirely?

Answer 1

A Swap file is created by the computer when your programs and data use more memory than the physical amount of RAM you have installed.  The machine writes some of the data in RAM to the hard drive to make room in RAM, then reads it back from the hard drive when needed.  

Generally you want to minimize the swapping (or Virtual Memory) because hard drives are much slower than RAM, and it slows your performance down to be swapping on and off the hard drive.  Installing more RAM memory is the machine will speed it up in this case.

Answer 2

Swap memory is disk space used to offload data which is still required but not in use. This allows other programs to use the memory without stopping the original programs. When the later program finishes with memory it allows the original to SWAP the disk stored data back to ram.

Answer 3

swap is a type of temporary stograge ... its actually used for exchanging or interchanging ... swap is created so that the memory data can be stored in it while waiting for writing it to the sotrage device , also during retreival the data is temporary stored in swap .........