how do applications (and OS) handle very big files?

Posted by DrStrangeLove on Super User See other posts from Super User or by DrStrangeLove
Published on 2011-11-25T00:14:39Z Indexed on 2011/11/25 2:02 UTC
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video

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memory

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file

For instance, i have video file which is 11.8 Gb, but my RAM memory only 2 Gb.. How does VLC (or other software) handle it? How do they load it into memory? I used VMMap tool (from sysinternals) to take a look at memory, and i saw:

private 160000K

working set 100000K

Obviously, it's much less than 11.8 Gb -So how did it happen?

This question is not only about video. I'd like to know how computer, in general, handles very large files.

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