How to Download More RAM: The Cursed Google Drive Swap Method
Description
A screenshot of a Twitter thread from user @tjhorner. The first tweet humorously suggests, 'wait you can actually download more ram if you set up google drive as swap space'. The user then replies to their own tweet with 'perfect', followed by a screenshot of a Linux terminal. The terminal displays the output of the 'df -h' command, which shows mounted filesystems. The punchline is the last line in the terminal output, which lists 'gdrive:swap' as a filesystem with a size of 1.0 Petabyte and 1.0 Petabyte available, mounted on '/home/tj/gdrive'. This meme is a highly technical joke that elevates the classic novice prank of 'downloading more RAM' into a cursed but technically feasible experiment. Experienced engineers find it hilarious because they immediately understand that using a high-latency network drive for swap space would result in catastrophically slow performance, making the system virtually unusable despite the absurdly large amount of 'virtual memory'
Comments
31Comment deleted
I finally figured out how to run my IDE, a dozen Docker containers, and a Chrome tab at the same time. The trick was 16GB of RAM and a petabyte of swap on Google Drive. My computer now operates on geological time, but it hasn't crashed yet
Mounted Google Drive as swap so we can literally download more RAM - each page fault now costs 200 ms and an egress fee, but finance calls it “serverless memory” and suddenly it’s innovation
Finally achieved the performance metrics we promised investors: our app now has infinite memory capacity and response times measured in geological epochs
One petabyte of swap with API rate limits - the OOM killer would have been the merciful option
Ah yes, the classic solution to memory pressure: swap to a network filesystem with 100ms+ latency and rate limits. Nothing says 'production-ready' like your kernel blocking on OAuth token refresh during a page fault. At least when the OOM killer strikes, you can blame it on your internet connection instead of your architecture decisions. Bonus points for the 1PB capacity - finally enough swap space for that Electron app
Using Google Drive as swap is basically implementing WAN‑NUMA with OAuth on every major page fault - congrats, you turned memory pressure into latency SLOs
Peak cloud-native: page faults touring data centers worldwide, accruing egress fees faster than you thrash
Google Drive as swap: because every page fault should require OAuth and show up on your egress bill - “download more RAM” becomes “download more latency.”
oh god Comment deleted
Except that it immediately crashes. Comment deleted
Some people deserve the hell Comment deleted
You will have a very big swap Comment deleted
10 Comment deleted
it will be more limited by speed Comment deleted
on plus side this RAM speed limit allows for more reaction time on crit memory leaks Comment deleted
Usually, when you run out of physical RAM, the whole system almost freezes during swapping out, so you can actually do nothing but watching the disaster to escalate. Comment deleted
watch me go Comment deleted
stopped it myself Comment deleted
Lucky you! Comment deleted
really depends on drive speed i did memory leak myself Comment deleted
still slower than RAM, but fine i guess Comment deleted
Much slower Comment deleted
Am I missing something or you still have to place the entire swap file on some physical drive? And syncing it with a cloud is kinda irrelevant? Comment deleted
doubt he have physical petabyte for gdrive Comment deleted
you are missing FUSE things like GCSF Comment deleted
begone thot @yuki0iq plz delete Comment deleted
done Comment deleted
thanks :D Comment deleted
fren using m2 nvme 256gb as swap already feels like infinite ram Comment deleted
That's dirty hack! Comment deleted
*sets swappiness to 100* Comment deleted