Inactive Memory

biggerstronger · May 29, 2005

I did a forum search on the subject and didn't find many things useful, so I figured I'd ask anyway. First, what exaclty is inactive memory? I've read that it's memory that has been used, but is now available for use if you open an application. But does it work as fast and the same as free memory?

Also, sometimes my free memory is about 300 mb, and then shoots down really fast to about 10 mb or so, without any large change in the system enviroment, replaced as inactive memory. Is there any way that I can make that memory free memory, or does it really matter?

menace3054 · May 30, 2005

biggerstronger said:
I did a forum search on the subject and didn't find many things useful, so I figured I'd ask anyway. First, what exaclty is inactive memory? I've read that it's memory that has been used, but is now available for use if you open an application. But does it work as fast and the same as free memory?

Also, sometimes my free memory is about 300 mb, and then shoots down really fast to about 10 mb or so, without any large change in the system enviroment, replaced as inactive memory. Is there any way that I can make that memory free memory, or does it really matter?

i posted the same exact question under powermac, but no one replied.. i want to know too! the other day i had 1.58 gb of inactive memory

Acill · May 30, 2005

Inactive memory is allocated memory that hasn't been accessed during last N Secs (quite likely to be first candidates for being swapped/paged out if memory being demanded). [I always think of Inactive memory as the memory used by caches]

Or memory that was used once or more that isnt currently being used but could be used again or used as swap at any time. I hope that helps out.

Inactive Memory

biggerstronger

Guest

menace3054

Guest

Acill

Shop Amazon