# Memory Management

**URL:** <https://forum.kx.com/t/memory-management/8047>\
**Category:** Community Support\
**Tags:** kdb-and-q\
**Created:** [December 17, 2012, 10:49am UTC](https://forum.kx.com/t/memory-management/8047 "2012-12-17T10:49:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![occhiogrosso\_gr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/f14d63/32.png) [@occhiogrosso\_gr](https://forum.kx.com/u/occhiogrosso_gr)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 10:49am UTC](https://forum.kx.com/t/memory-management/8047/1 "2012-12-17T10:49:00Z")

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Dear all,

i have a question: if I have 8 csv file that togheter occupy 1GB on Hard Drive,&nbsp;how much memory RAM do I need to work whit these?

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**Author:** ![\_Oz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/_/f07891/32.png) [@\_Oz](https://forum.kx.com/u/_Oz)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 11:08am UTC](https://forum.kx.com/t/memory-management/8047/2 "2012-12-17T11:08:00Z")

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It’ll depend on what’s the data inside of those. Usually it’ll be less memory, but I can think of an example when it’ll be more ;) (0,0,0… Read as ints or longs for instance)

Why don’t you try loading one of them and looking at memory load?

Cheers,  
Oleg

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**Author:** ![occhiogrosso\_gr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/f14d63/32.png) [@occhiogrosso\_gr](https://forum.kx.com/u/occhiogrosso_gr)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 1:35pm UTC](https://forum.kx.com/t/memory-management/8047/3 "2012-12-17T13:35:00Z")

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I have tried to load them and kdb get out of memory :(

Il giorno lunedì 17 dicembre 2012 12:08:03 UTC+1, \_Oz\_ ha scritto:

> It’ll depend on what’s the data inside of those. Usually it’ll be less memory, but I can think of an example when it’ll be more ;) (0,0,0… Read as ints or longs for instance)
> 
> Why don’t you try loading one of them and looking at memory load?
> 
> Cheers,  
> Oleg

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**Author:** ![charlie1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ec9cab/32.png) [@charlie1](https://forum.kx.com/u/charlie1)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 1:40pm UTC](https://forum.kx.com/t/memory-management/8047/4 "2012-12-17T13:40:00Z")

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have you tried loading them into a splayed table?

http://code.kx.com/wiki/Cookbook/LoadingFromLargeFilesAndSplaying

If low on memory, use -g 1 command line option and also perhaps .Q.gc after each chunk of loading.