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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. [1]

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.
  1. It’s the icon on your Windows desktop that looks like a computer. A menu will appear.
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  3. It’s on the left side of the window. This opens the System Properties dialog. [2]
    • Enter your administrator password if prompted.
  4. It’s the first “Settings” button on the “Advanced” tab. A list of performance options will appear. [3]
  5. It’s the second tab on the window.
  6. 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. [4]
  7. Now you can edit the options on this screen.
  8. This selects the drive as the location for your paging file (virtual RAM).
    • 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. [5]
  9. A pop-up message will appear, letting you know that you’ll need to restart your computer before the changes will take effect. [6]
  10. 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.
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