Internal Fragmentation vs External Fragmentation
Internal vs External
Fragmentation
Users keep loading and unloading processes from main memory. Processes are typically stored in blocks in memory. The available memory blocks may not be large enough to accommodate processes that require contiguous memory space. This condition is called fragmentation. In other words, fragmentation occurs when a user dynamically allocates memory for a process and the process fails to load even though sufficient memory is available because continuous memory allocation is not possible .
Internal Fragmentation
When a process is assigned to a memory block and if that process is smaller than the memory requested, it creates a free space in the assigned memory block. Then the difference between assigned and requested memory is called the internal fragmentation.
External Fragmentation
When the process is loaded or removed from the memory, a free space is created. This free space creates an empty space in the memory which is called external fragmentation.
Note
In a nutshell, both internal and external fragmentation are natural process related to empty memory space or memory being wasted. However, the problem with both cases cannot be resolved entirely but can be mitigated to some extent with solutions given above.
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