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File Management Tutorial
The following tutorial is designed to acquaint you with basic procedures related to data storage and retrieval. Everytime you create a document, the first thing you need to do is to save it.  But the question is:  Where?  If you need to continue working on that same document a week later, you will need to know how to retrieve it. 

Knowing your computer - Storage devices: Knowing how a computer stores data is essential for creating, storing and retrieving your own files.  A computer stores data on a disk drive, which could be local or remote.  Different types of drives are possible, your computer may have all or some in the list that follows: 

 
USB flash drive. These are flash memory data storage devices integrated with a USB (universal serial bus) interface. They are typically small, lightweight, removable and rewritable and use the USB mass storage standard, supported by most operating systems such as Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Unix. To access the data stored in a flash drive, the drive must be connected to a computer, either by plugging it into a USB host controller built into the computer, or into a USB hub.

 
Hard drive. This is the internal storage unit of your computer.  Normally, you will install programs on it and store your data on it.  You cannot see the hard drive unless you remove the case of the computer. 

PC: This drive is normally designated as the "C" drive. If you have a large hard drive, it may be divided into two (or more) parts.  In this case, you will have a "C" drive and a "D" drive.

CD/DVD-ROM/RW drive.   It will temporarily hold a CD or DVD(computer program, music CD, movie DVD). Depending on the drive characteristics, it could read, and/or write new CD's and DVD's.
 

 

Zip or Jazz drive.  These are high-capacity storage drives (one diskette will hold 100MB or 250MB of data on a Zip drive or as much as 2 Gigabytes of data on a Jazz drive).  As a rule, these drives are external--they sit next to your computer and are attached to it by a cable.  Some computers come equipped with an internal zip or jazz drive.   

 

Remote drive. You may also store your files in hard disks located not in your local computer, but in a remote server provided that you have a network connection and access to that server.

PC: You can see what drives you have on your computer by looking inside the "My Computer" icon on the Windows desktop.  You can also view what's on each drive by using your left mouse button to double-click on the A, C, or D icon.

 

Online Data backup. There are many online data backup services available these days. In online backup service, the user typically pays an annual charge for the right to store data online in a secure remote web server. The advantages are the safety of the data in the event of a catastrophe, cmputer theft or travelling. However, to use online backup, you need to have a high speed internet connection and pay some money. Hence, you have to be selective about the data that you want to store online. A good thumb rule would be to store that data online till the time you have taken a backup of it in CD or DVD and moved it to a safe place other than where the original computer is. In this way, frequently accessed data is available online and other data is archived in the CDs or other media.

 

Folders and Files

 

Think of your disk drive as one big file cabinet.  You will stash your work in the file cabinet.  But you shouldn't just throw documents in without any organizational structure.   
   

Folders provide that organizational structure to a disk drive, just as they do in a file cabinet.  First, you will put labeled folders into your cabinet/drive.  Each folder will have a name.  When you view the contents of a disk drive, folders are normally listed in alphabetical order. 
 

Inside the folder, you will put your documents.  In order to be able to find your documents later within an overstuffed folder, you will give each document a name.  On a PC, it is wise to use the following naming conventions for both folders and files: 
 

  • A file name is made up of two parts:  (1) the name of the document and (2) the file extension.  You may name a file anything you wish, but it is preferable to name a file something you are likely to remember later.
  • File names should be no longer than 8 characters whenever possible.  Although Windows (and Mac) allow longer file names, you may get in problems while transfering files to other computers if you use longer file names. Also, use only letters and numbers in your file names. Special characters like "-", "/", "&", or blank spaces must be avoided in the file name.
  • The second part of a file name is the extension.  In the file text.doc, the word text is the file name and the .doc is the extension.  A period always separates the two.  The extension identifies what kind of a document you have.  Some examples of file extensions are:
    • .txt : plain text
    • .doc : Microsoft Word Document
    • .htm or .html : Web document 
    • .gif , .jpg , .bmp : image
    • .ppt : PowerPoint Presentation

Saving a Document 
There is no great mystery about saving documents.  A document will go wherever you put it.  However, if you don't pay attention, it's likely to end up where you least expect it.  A few tips about saving documents: 

  1. What drive is it on?  You can save it anywhere--the usb drive, the hard drive inside the computer, a zip/jazz drive (external), or on a remote location on a server.  You have to tell the computer where you want it.
  2. What folder is it in?  Once you've chosen the drive, you must then select the folder.  You can put it in any folder you want. 
  3. What is the of the name of the file?  You can call it anything you like, but take in account some filename conventions. Play it safe, and use only 8-character file names.  For consistency, use all lowercase letters in filenames.
  4. What is the extension?  If you have created a MS Word document, be sure the extension is .doc. If it's a webpage, the extension should be .htm or .html (it also could be .asp, .php, etc.)

Paths
Once a file or folder has been saved, it will have a specific address on the computer, just as you have one for your home.  This "address," or where a file lives, is called a path.  Here's an example(Win): 

        c:\cter\edpsy387\paper3.doc

This path says the following:  This file is stored on the "C" drive (c:\), in the folder called "cter", in the "edpsy387" folder. The file is named "paper3.doc" and it is an MS Word document because it has a .doc extension on it.  Notice that each level of the hierarchy is separated by a backslash "\".  The highest level is the drive; the lowest level is the file name.  

Moving and Copying a File
There will be times when you need to change the location of a file.  You may want to copy it from one folder to another on a drive, or you may want to copy it from the hard drive to a diskette (or vice versa).  Or you may simply want to move it to another location without making another copy of it.  Moving and copying files from one place to another is relatively simple.  However, a few warnings are in order: 

  1. If you are copying from the hard drive to a diskette, watch out for the size of your files.  Hard drives are large capacity storage areas.  Portable drives will hold only a certain size of data.  For text files, this is usually not a problem, since they tend to be rather small.  But, once you get into multimedia files (images, sound or video), you may have a serious problem since these files tend to be enormous (especially sound and video).  Check the size of the file before you attempt to copy it onto a disk if you suspect it might be quite large.  This is also true of PowerPoint presentation files. 
  2. If your file is too big, you can either zip the file (compress it) or save it onto a larger drive. Also, you may burn a CD.

Moving vs. Copying
Moving a file means just that:  you have one copy of a file that you remove from one location and place in another.  You start out with one copy of a file and you end up with one copy of the file in a different place.  When you drag and drop a file from one folder to another folder on the same drive, you are moving it.  When you drag and drop a file from one drive to another, you are copying it.  Copying a file means that you make a second copy of the same file and store it in a different location.  You start out with one copy of a file and end up with two, each in a different location. 

Retrieving a File  
Retrieving a file is simple, once you know how to save a file.  It's the same process in reverse.  Let's assume that yesterday you saved a file named "test.doc".  Today, you want to go back and add to it.  So instead of creating a new file you will OPEN an existing file. 

When we try to open a file, a dialogue box will open up.  This box is asking us what file we want to work on. We have to choose the file.  In order to choose it, we will have to follow the same steps we followed when we saved it: 

  • What drive is the file on?
  • What folder is it in?
  • What is the name of the file?

Finding a File  
Retrieving a document is quite simple if you remember where you put it in the first place.  But you will need some method for retrieving files when you can't remember where you put it. Several methods are possible: 

  • Seek and you will find.  You could always open up and look in each and every folder on your drive or disk until you find it.  This is not too efficient.
  • A better method is:

PC: to click on START then FIND (or SEARCH) then FILES OR FOLDERS  

Mac: being in FINDER, go to the item FILE in the menu, then FIND