Why OS X use swap when there is lots of "inactive memory"?

Posted by Balchev on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Balchev
Published on 2012-08-12T12:29:16Z Indexed on 2012/12/19 23:06 UTC
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osx

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swap

I am using OS X from few months (Lion and now Mountain Lion). I have 8 GB on my mini and almost daily now it get close to that. On Windows 7 machine with 8 GB I never had that kind of problem. Anyway, I read over the net, that the inactive memory is app cache of the programs that are recently closed and can be used for faster reopening.And this inactive memory can be released to a new app if needed. It is not released. Instead OS X starts swapping. So my question is why OS X use swap when there is lots of "inactive memory"? Here a screen that shows what I mean:

enter image description here

I really hope there is a away to make OS X to use those 2.69 GB before start swapping.I really do.

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