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I was trying to open my excel file from my disk-based thumb drive when i got the following error message

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I proceeded to make space on my hard drive by emptying my recycle bin and deleting some stuff permanantly before i could open my excel file from my disk based thumb drive.

Why do i have to make space on my startup drive before i could open my excel file , I thought the file would be temporary stored in my RAM and executed from there . The file size is at max 30KB , I am sure it can be stored on RAM

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  • Sarfari will create a temp file on your hdd even if you "open" the file.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jan 21, 2014 at 16:22

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Welcome to the wonderful world of swap-files. OSX like Windows uses actual files in the file system to extend the base-ram of the system. Essentially, bits of RAM that aren't currently being used can be temporarily written to disk and then re-read back into RAM on-demand. Your disk-based thumb-drive probably does not have enough space to accommodate the swap-files. (and storing swap files on flash... is a very bad idea.)

You can disable the swap-file usage, but doing so would require that you have sufficient RAM to load everything your computer runs without it.

You can read more information here:

http://osxdaily.com/2010/10/08/mac-virtual-memory-swap/

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  • I did not include linux/*nix in this category, because they typically use a swap partition rather than files in the file-system.
    – TheCompWiz
    Commented Jan 21, 2014 at 16:07
  • "Your disk-based thumn drive probably doesnt have enough space ", my disked based thumb drive has excess space , more than 2GB available , i dont think your arguement stands
    – Computernerd
    Commented Jan 21, 2014 at 16:33
  • 2gb of free space... is too little for swap. My argument is correct, and the error indicated above is exactly what you would see. Try disabling swap or moving the swap folder... and see what you get from there.
    – TheCompWiz
    Commented Jan 21, 2014 at 17:37

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