Creating and Using File Folders

What are File Folders? File Folders represent named storage areas in your computer. You can create as many as you want. They can be both in your computer and/or on external storage media (like flash drives, memory cards, external hard drives or CDs/DVDs). You can put Folders within other Folders.

Planning your Filing System It’s a good idea to start with paper and pencil and sketch-out the storage categories you are going to need. Do you want to keep the information in your computer, or externally (or both!)? Do you want to keep pictures separate from text documents? It’s important to choose meaningful names for your Folders.

Planning your Filing System (cont.) Let’s suppose first that you want to store your information internally . . . Are you going to use the ‘Library’ elements that come as part of your Operating System – i.e. ‘Documents’, ‘Pictures’, ‘Music’, ‘Videos’? Would you rather create the new Folders on your C-drive (or D-drive, E-drive, etc.)?

Planning your Filing System (cont.) If you want to store the data externally you can use CDs/DVDs, external hard drives, memory cards and/or flash drives. Remember that you can create your own Folders on these external storage media in just the same way as when storing internally. It’s a good idea to name each Folder with a meaningful name. It’s also a good idea to name the actual external storage device itself, and the individual files with meaningful names.

Now we’ll put words into practice! OK! – now let’s go to our machines and create a bunch of folders for ourselves . . .