Folders and files. What are files and folders? What is the root folder
Throughout our lives, many of us, without even noticing it, put everything in boxes, drawers and folders. Take the same kitchen. Plates lie with plates, knives, forks and spoons usually lie in a dryer, or on a special stand. We store spices either in jars or in bags. We keep our clothes and bedding in chests of drawers or closets. Women needlewomen store their threads, ribbons, beads, buttons, and tools in special chests and boxes. They will never leave it anywhere.
Men also store their tools in special drawers and boxes. A good craftsman will have each screw of the correct size in a special drawer with retractable cassettes. And if he has a workshop, then, like a good master, he will find any tool with his eyes closed.
Collectors of stamps, postcards, badges, and coins arrange their treasures in separate envelopes, folders and boxes.
We all try to store the same documents, passports, diplomas, tax identification numbers, pension certificates, and other securities in one place.
The same thing happens on our computer. Only in this case we do not store material things, but information in the form of files.
All information, in the form of files, recorded on hard drive or any other medium for its storage, reading and processing is located in folders. Folders are also called directories. What is a folder? Figuratively speaking, a folder is a kind of container for storing other containers with information -. In a simplified way, we can give an analogy with a filing cabinet, where information is stored in cards. Imagine that cards are files, and folders are boxes with them, in turn, boxes are stored in cabinets.
A folder (directory or directory) is a place on a medium where files or other folders with files are stored. Those. such a storage system can be quite extensive. The main folder contains another folder or folders, which may contain another folder, etc. Nested folders are usually called subfolders or subdirectories. This system was invented to organize stored information on a computer’s hard drive. All folders have names that you give yourself operating system, the program or you yourself, if the directory was created by you. You can create a folder in by right-clicking in the Explorer program window or on the desktop. Clicking the button brings up a menu with expected user actions, where you need to select the “create” menu item with the “folder” drop-down submenu.
The basis or root of this entire system is the root folder.
What is the root folder?
This is the first and main folder (root) in which all the others are located. It has no name and is denoted by the special character “\”. For example, the designation C:\ tells us that this is the root folder of drive C. If you created a “My Music” directory in the root folder, then its path will look like this - C:\My Music. Suppose that in the “My Music” folder you created another one called “Rock”, where you will store audio files with rock bands, then in this case its path will be “C:\My Music\Rock. In turn, let's say that you wanted to sort rock music into groups. In this case, it would be logical to create folders with the names of groups in the “Rock” subfolder. Thus, we get a chain of subfolders.
What does the folder look like?
In the operating system Windows folder is indicated by a yellow graphic element in the form of a stationery folder. Icon may vary slightly depending on settings appearance elements.
The computer writes incoming data to the hard drive sectors in order: from beginning to end, and then enters the coordinates of this data into a special table.
As we all know, all information is stored on the computer's hard drive. The computer writes incoming data to the hard drive sectors in order: from beginning to end, and then enters the coordinates of this data into a special table.
When he needs to read the recorded data, he turns to the table and uses it to find the necessary information. This is how the computer itself sees the information stored in it.
With users the situation is somewhat different. In order not to create complete confusion in our heads with scraps of data recorded here and there, scattered across sectors, and so on, all data is presented to users in the form of files.
A file is a named amount of information. Figuratively speaking, a file can be compared to a notebook that can contain anything. The file stores certain information. It could be a text, a song, a drawing or a program. Each file has a name and extension, which are written separated by a dot.
Why a file needs a name is clear (for the same reason a person needs it), but why does it need an extension?
The fact is that the file name extension indicates that the file belongs to some type, thereby telling us what kind of information is stored in it.
For example, a file with the extension .txt is a text file: it can be created, opened and read, edited, saved, and closed. Files with the extensions .exe, .com, .bat refer to executable files (they are sometimes called simply programs or applications) and so on.
Most modern applications (programs) have the extension .exe. To run any program, you need to go to the folder that contains the program, as well as service files, and run the file with the name of the program and the extension .exe.
Sometimes the operating system hides file extensions. To make them visible, you should open the My Computer window (the icon is located on the desktop) and in the View system menu, select Folder Options. There, on the View tab, you will see the Hide extensions for registered file types.
By unchecking this item and clicking OK, you will be able to see the extensions of all files. In the same window, you can make absolutely all invisible system and service files in your system visible to you by selecting Show all files.
However, it is not recommended for beginners to do this, since by mistake you can delete or move a file necessary for the operation of the entire system, which can lead to the system losing performance. Any file whose type registered in the operating system, you can open it by double-clicking on it.
Each file, like any other object, has its own context menu, which, as you already know, can be called up by right-clicking on the file icon.
The file is considered registered in the system, if the operating system “knows” that this file can be opened by any program installed on the system. For example, files with the .txt extension can be read in Notepad. .doc document files are read in Word, etc.
For user convenience and to avoid confusion, the files are located in folders. If all the files contained on your hard drive were haphazardly located everywhere, it would be very difficult to find the document or, for example, drawing you need.
By the way, here’s how it’s created in !
If you periodically look through all the folders on your computer to find a specific file, then it’s worth thinking about how to create your own file storage system and organize your workspace once and for all.
To organize files and folders manually, you will have to spend more than one hour, but in the future this time will pay off, since you will know exactly where this or that document is located, and this will inevitably affect the efficiency of your work.
Before you start, you should take a piece of paper and draw a future system for organizing folders and files on it.
Decide on which drive you will store the information, whether you will duplicate it, and where and how to archive it. It all depends on how many logical drives you have and what kind cloud storage you use.
Create a hierarchical structure. Think about the names of your main folders: home, work, personal, music, video, pictures, photos, games (there should be a minimum number of them). Next you need to decide on the names subfolders. There shouldn’t be many of them either – no more than twenty.
For example, the main folder “Home” may include: finances, education, travel, health. Music, videos and books are organized by genre, pictures - by topic: nature, animals. It is better to store photographs separately from pictures.
Cleaning your computer from unnecessary files
Go through your files and delete those you haven't looked at in over a year. If you don't want to delete it, archive it. Rename important documents, group or vice versa, split files by content.
Transfer all documents and folders created on your desktop (if any) to your hard drive. It is recommended to create only shortcuts to documents and programs on the desktop.
You can also use the popular CCleaner program to clean your computer.
Organize convenient access to all your folders
Using the Explorer tree, simply drag folders you use frequently to Favorites. For quick access this folder can be pinned to the taskbar: click on it right click mouse ⇨ Panels ⇨ Create toolbar.
If convenient, use file managers.
Create shortcuts on your desktop.
How to make a shortcut: Right-click on the desktop ⇨ “create shortcut” and copy the path to your folder, file, URL into the window.
Shortcuts can also be created in folders - for example, a link to another, related folder to quickly move between them. For example, in my “Music” folder, which is located on the C: drive, there is a shortcut to the music that I store on the Yandex disk.
A program for recognizing and sorting musical compositions - at picard.musicbrainz.org.
Remove duplicate files, these will help free programs like DupKiller and Auslogics Duplicate File Finder.
In Windows 8 and 8.1, it is possible to place a shortcut to any folder in the tiled Start menu: right-click on the file or folder icon and select “Pin to Start Screen”.
When you have created your system and organized your files and folders, cleared out the garbage, follow simple rules that will help maintain the new order.
How to organize files and folders on your computer, infographic
Rules for storing files and folders
The main rule is that the name of each folder and file should correspond to the content as closely as possible.
Work with files and folders “as input”: it is better to spend time and immediately come up with an adequate name than to review a lot of documents, trying to understand what and where.
For notes and notes, use text files. Create text documents (.txt) in each folder with the name “Read”, where you briefly describe the structure of the folder, everything you consider necessary: which files are duplicated, which version of the document is newer, or how one document differs from another.
Create an “Archive” folder and dump files that are no longer relevant there. Don’t forget about the structure of the archive: in order not to clutter this folder and quickly find the document you need, create folders in it with names that duplicate your main ones: home, work, photo, etc.
Either rename downloaded files, such as programs, or again create a “Read” file in the folder and briefly describe what the program is. I'm sure this is a problem for many - I downloaded the program and forgot what it was and why it was there at all.
Don’t store a hodgepodge of different topics in one file; it’s better to break them up into text documents with appropriate names if you don’t have time to deal with them.
You can organize the contents of large text files by creating tables of contents. Thus, to find out the contents of a file, you only need to move the cursor to the file shortcut and the first page with the table of contents will appear in the preview.
If the file contains an article or an excerpt from an article from the Internet, a link must be provided to it so that you can return to the original if necessary.
In each folder, you can create a special document where links from the Internet on the topic will be placed, so as not to search in your browser bookmarks.
For working files that are subject to frequent editing and have more than one version, it is worth creating separate folders with a txt file that briefly describes their history. Instead of names, put the project number and the date the order was received.
For example, PR8_10-03-14 may mean “project number eight from the tenth of March.”
Review all files once a month and get rid of unnecessary ones: delete them or send them to the archive. Old unused files distract attention and interfere with effective work.
And don't forget to duplicate the files that are most important to you.
I hope these tips will help you organize your files and folders, which in turn will increase your productivity.
Available on every computer. In this lesson you will learn what files and folders are and why they are needed.
What is a file
To better understand what are files and folders I will give you an analogy with stationery. Imagine that you have several sheets of colored paper. They different sizes, colors and shapes. You can put these sheets in your desk drawer where they will be stored and when you need to take a sheet of paper, you will open the desired drawer and take the sheet.
So, on a computer, each piece of paper is a file, and a folder is a box in which you put files.
All data on the computer is stored in the form of files. File– the smallest unit of data in a computer. Movie, text document, drawing, song - these are all files.
A sheet of paper has properties: color, size, weight, etc. Each file also has its own properties: size (the amount of space it takes up on the hard drive), name (file name), type (text, music, etc.). To understand what type a file is, you need to look at its name.
The file name is written as “name.extension”.
You can understand the file type by its extension. For example, the file “report.txt” means that you have text file. The file extension is needed to know which program to open this file. The text file is opened using Notepad. There are a huge number of file extensions, and it is impossible to remember everything.
Why are folders needed?
Let's go back to the pieces of paper. You have many different sheets of paper of different sizes. It is inconvenient to store them in one box; they get mixed up and it is difficult to find a small leaf among the large ones. It is better to put each type of sheet in a separate box. The same goes for files on your computer. Imagine that you store music files, movies, pictures in one place. It turns out to be a small pile, in which it is very inconvenient to find the desired film or song.
Folders are needed to separate files by type, just like drawers separate paper. You can create as many folders as you like and place files in them. For example: create a “Cinema” folder and store movies in it, and store songs in the music folder.
But storing all the songs in the “Music” package is inconvenient. After all, there are many performers there. You can create a folder in the “Music” folder with the name of the artist or the name of the album. So, in the end, we get a directory of folders in which it is convenient to store files.
This concludes the lesson. We'll look at how to create folders in the next lesson.