A memory dump is the process of taking all information content in RAM and writing it to a storage drive.

Developers commonly use memory dumps to gather diagnostic information at the time of a crash to help them troubleshoot issues and learn more about the event. Information yielded by the memory dump can help developers fix errors in operating systems and other programs of all kinds.

Some computer errors are unrecoverable because they require a reboot to regain functionality, but the information stored in RAM at the time of a crash contains the code that produced the error. Memory dumps save data that might other wise be lost to RAM's volatile nature or overwriting.