Is This Normal?

[AppleGoat]

MacBook Pro 13" i5 2.3ghz - Crucial M4 128GB

I've noticed that the available space of my drive fluctuates with the amount of applications running. For instance, I had Photoshop open last night and the available space dropped down to around 91GB, then as soon as I closed it, my available space rose to like 93-94GB. At one point earlier, I could have sworn my drive was reading 65GB free. Hopefully, I was just seeing things.

 

[stridemat]

It's probably to do with the Page Ins and Outs that your computer is doing. Can you post a screen shot of your Activity Monitor, 'System Memory' tab?

 

[AppleGoat]

Not sure why my computer allocates RAM like that?

 

[2hvy4grvty]

You need more RAM.

 

[snaky69]

You need more RAM.

Indeed.

Your computer is using your SSD as virtual memory. Which would explain the fluctuation. Stick 8GB in that sucker.

 

[AppleGoat]

Photoshop is a RAM hungry application. Thus, I'm routinely running low. A few observations while running low on memory:

5400RPM Hitachi Stock Drive: Had become very laggy. As an example, clicking through tabs on a browser was very slow.

Crucial M4: No such lag, but the system may completely freeze or beach ball. Although it may do that with few applications open.

 

[2hvy4grvty]

SSDs are fast, but nowhere near the speed of RAM.