I need the memory usage particulars!

I have 8 GB DDR3 RAM on my laptop. Specs below.

I have started transfering complete data (~400GB) from one external HDD to another external HDD using Teracopy.

Below is the image of Resource Monitor. The free memory is showing very less value and sometimes 0. I have no problems with the system and it is working perfectly even now while moving the data.

I only want to understand the terminalogy of the below terms

Hardware Reserved - I assume this is taken by hardware device drivers.
In Use - Probably taken up by system and applications/programs.
Modified - ?
Standby - ?
Free - ?

and what is the difference between Standby and Free?

I think Free means it is not doing any thing. Standby bit might be used before uisng the Free bit. I might be wrong on this as I am only guessing.

What an interesting topic rraod. I wonder how many members have subscribed to this thread eagerly awaiting an informative response. I certainly have. Thanks

Hang the cursor over modified or any one of the others and it will tell you what it is.

You are the lucky one - all your RAM is being used. The dark blue part is what the system (superfetch) uses to cache processes that you used earlier so that you have faster access to those in case you use them again. But this is 'available' RAM - meaning if the RAM is needed for more running processes, the cached stuff has to give.

You have very little 'Hardware reserved'. That is used for some BIOS functions. Some of it is explained here - read the text that is written in italics.

'Modified' is a temporary storage of items that the system still needs to write back to disk.

And 'Free' should be pretty clear - it is completely unused and as far as RAM usage management is concerned has the same status as 'Cached' - it is available.

Mysteries of Windows Memory Management Revealed, Part 1 of 2
Mysteries of Windows Memory Management Revealed, Part 2 of 2
Presented by Mark Russinovich. Don't know him? You should.

I know him since Winternals days before it is changed to Sysinternals and then he joined Microsoft.
I have been using his products, Regmon, procmon, filemon, diskmon and ERD Commander etc. since 2004.

I have few ebooks written by him. Thank you for the above links.

To put it very short, Modified shows the amount of data that has to be written back to disk before the RAM it's using can be reused. Almost but not exactly the same than Standby which shows the amount of cached data not used at the moment. Difference is that whereas the Modified data (cache) must be written to disk before releasing the RAM it's using, the normal cached data in Standby can be discarded if needed, without writing it back to disk.

Hardware reserved is as you suspected, the amount of RAM reserved for hardware and drivers. For instance if your GPU uses shared memory the amount of RAM it takes is shown here. In Use shows how much is used for apps running at the moment.

So:

• Installed = the amount of RAM installed on your PC
• Total = Installed - Hardware reserved
• Free = Total - In Use - Modified - Stanby
• Cached = Modified + Standby

Kari

Thanks Carl, Wolfgang, Layback Bear, Mitchell, logicearth and Kari for the explanation.