How Computer Memory Works
Volatile memories only hold their contents while power is applied to the memory device. This is one issue that makes such memory critical in forensics. Once the computer is shut down, the data in a volatile memory is lost. Examples of volatile memories include static RAM (SRAM), synchronous static RAM (SSRAM), synchronous dynamic RAM (SDRAM), and Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) on-chip memory.
The most common type of memory today is dynamic random access memory (DRAM). SRAM is often used for CPU caches and registers, but those items are not part of our discussion of memory here. Whereas clusters and sectors are the fundamental building blocks of hard drives (traditional platter-based hard drives), RAM is built ...
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