Directory Structure of Drives Letters are actually short cuts for the longer names of drives. Instead of saying the floppy drive on top, you say - Drive A:. Instead of saying the other floppy drive, you say Drive B:. Drive letters C:, D:, and E: are reserved for additional components on your physical computer.

Drive C: is your hard drive. Drive D: can be the CD Rom drive, unless you have more than one hard drive, in which case it becomes Drive E:.

Any drive letter that begins with the letter F: through Z:, are network drives and are not physically located on your computer, but on a remote network server that is connected to your computer by a network card and a cable, or perhaps a phone line.

Each drive can be divided into folders. Because a floppy drive only holds a limited amount of information (3 1/2" high density disk - 1.44MB), you don't normally create folders.

There are now Zip Drives, Jazz Drives and Removable Drives that hold more than a normal floppy.  The Zip Drive will normally hold 100MB of space (equivalent of more than 70 floppy disks).

The larger physical drives, as well as the network drives, would be impossible to deal with if they weren't divided into smaller components called directories, or folders.

For instance, if you decide to install the Microsoft Office Suite on your hard drive:

  1. Create a folder called MSOFFICE
  2. Create subfolders for WORD, EXCEL, POWERPOINT, and ACCESS
  3. Create product subfolders for TEMPLATES, MACROS, DOCUMENTS, and GRAPHICS

 
  It is starting to look like an organization chart - which it is. Your information should be organized on your drives.

 

 

Hopefully this has provided enough information to feel more comfortable with computers, and you feel ready to explore more in Computer Software. In the Windows 95 Introduction, more information is given on how this program provides access to all software on your machine, as well as how to use the Windows Explorer, and the Control Panel to customize your desktop.