Document last modified -

Lets Get Started

1. Basically, a computer is a filing system.
2. The filing system consists of:

1. A filing cabinet.
2. File drawers
3. Folders (or separators) within a file drawer
4. Individual files within folders, within the drawer, within the filing cabinet.

1. Think of:

1. Filing cabinet = hard drive "c"
2. File drawers within the cabinet = major files on drive "c"
3. Folders (or separators) = sub-files within major files
4. Individual files = unique files within the separators.

1. Example: (This is a personnel office and we hired John Jones as an hourly employee to work in the meat department.

1. We put the employment application in a file folder and label it "John Jones".
2. We go the the filing cabinet, Drive "c",
3. We open the file drawer which has hourly employees, a major folder in Drive "c",
4. We go to the file separator within the hourly drawer for the meat department, a sub-folder in Drive "c",
5. And slip the John Jones personnel file within the meat department separator, the individual file on Drive "c".

1. Now, later, we want to find John Jones’s file.

1. We go to the filing cabinet, "c", we go to the hourly drawer, major folder, we go to the meat department within that drawer, sub-folder, and we find Mr. Jones’s file.
2. That is called a "DATA PATH".

1. "Data Path" for Mr. Jones

• "C"
• "Hourly"
• "Meat Department"
• "Jones"

1. Temporary Filing Cabinets-Floppy Disk Drive "A" (You interview John Jones while traveling, and get his employment application to take back to the office..

1. Think of a brief case as your temporary filing cabinet.
2. You file Mr. Jones’s file in a separator, hourly, a folder within that separator, meat department, and finally Mr. Jones’s file.

1. Temporary Filing Cabinet-CD

1. The same thing as a floppy but holds many, many more files. The structure is the same.

1. Summary of computer filing cabinets

• Drive "A" floppy disk
• Drive "B" optional extra floppy disk
• Drive "C" hard disk storage
• Drive "D" thru "Z" extra hard disk storage or CD

1. Depends on the type of computer "interface" (for example Windows 3.x or Windows 95) you have but basically,

1. xxxxxxxx.xxx
2. eight characters plus a "dot" (period) plus three characters.
3. The characters before the "dot" describe the file, sometimes in an abbreviated form, and the three characters following the "dot" describe the type of file that the computer or computer program will recognize.

1. Avoid any character except "a" through "z" and "0" through "9"
2. Some characters may give specific "attributes" to a file that you may not want.

1. For example, you many accidentally tell the computer to hide a file so that you cannot see it on your computer.

1. Common to all PC’s (We do not name, or change these files)

1. xxxxxxxx.exe
2. Files that end in .exe execute a program
3. Files that end in .dll are linked to a program and are called dynamic link library files, or library files.

1. Files that we name

1. We name files that we construct
2. Computers name files that it constructs.
3. Examples of files that we name:

• Microsoft Word (a word processing program) is a xxxxxxxx.doc file
• We apply characters for the first characters before the "dot" and the program "Word" applies the characters .doc for us because that signifies to the computer that the file was made by Microsoft Word.