NAND vs SDCARD (where is my memory used at?)

[m4f1050]

Originally Posted by mbellot

All correct.



Not quite "wiped". The android system is loaded into RAM, but the file system remains active (just like WinMo) so you can install programs and adjust settings. These are all saved to the data.img file on the SD card.



Not really. Think of it like a computer. When the PC boots some of its memory is used by the operating system (stored on the hard drive, or in NAND for the phone) gets loaded into memory so it can be run.



"ROM" is a bit of an incorrect term, and not at all like a hard drive (which is definitely not write once). Part of the NAND is treated like "ROM", but other parts are read/write just like RAM. The difference is that anything stored in RAM goes away after power cycle or soft reset.

Further confusing the issue is that even the portions that are normally "ROM"-like are actually re-writable for things like firmware updates.

So when we install ANDROID in NAND (or WM ROM in present time) we install in the ROM section and does the OS use part of the ROM (is ROM what we call NAND???) as "hard drive" and store the installed apps or does it store it in RAM? But somehow this RAM doesn't get wiped out when there is a reboot, power off?

Let's split my question....

Is NAND ROM or RAM?

And if RAM is the memory and you load the OS from RAM to RAM, the file system is on RAM but it's not wiped out, that means if we install ANDROID to NAND (or RAM?) we will have less memory for the OS correct?

Where are installed apps stored at?

In comparison, a computer has "memory" and "harddrive"... Is "memory" RAM, "harddrive" ROM or vice versa?

I thought I had this figured out, but not quite. I understand the PC quite well (im a computer engineer and mcpd) but these devices are confusing to me still... In a PC you have what we call harddrive where OS and apps get installed, when you use the PC the os loads into what we call memory.