Exercise 2. What information can you store on a computer? Where can you store your documents or files?

Exercise 3. Read the text and write the number of the paragraph that tells you about:

- computer directories

- organizing personal files

- where you can store data

Computers store letters, reports, pictures, music and video as data. You can store data on floppy disks but they are too small to hold most pictures or videos. You can store these on a CD-ROM but you need a CD-re-writer to copy the data. People often use portable removable disks, which can store up to one gigabyte of data and do not need any expensive hardware. Most computer owners store their data on the hard disk but because computers can crash, they often use other disks to make back-up copies.

Computers store program files on the hard disk, which is usually the C: drive in the Windows OS (operating system) or the Macintosh Hard Disk in Apple computers. Computers store program files in folders and organize these folders in a directory (see below). The plus sign (+) means that the folder contains other folders or files. Clicking the plus sign next to the icon opens the other folders and files in it. Clicking the minus (-) sign closes the folder. 

It is.important to organize your flies. Windows has a folder called My Documents to help you do this. It contains other folders called My Music, My eBooks, My Videos and My Pictures. Saving files on your hard disk without any order makes them difficult to find.

Exercise 4. Match the questions (1-5) with the answers (a-e).

1 Why can't a floppy disk store videos?

2 What are removable disks?

3 Where do computers store program files?

4 Why do you need to organize your files?

5 What happens if you click the plus sign?

 a) Portable data storage disks.

b) Other folders or files appear.

c) So that you can find them easily.

d) On the hard disk.

e) Because it can't hold a lot of data.

Exercise 5. Work in pairs. Look at the files below. How would you organize them so that you can find them easily? Add more files to the list.

music files  • history essays • games

pictures of my friends • videos

photos of my family • my science reports

letters to my friends • letters to my family

my English language lessons

desktop pictures • screen savers

Exercise 6. How is it possible to lose files on a computer?

Exercise 7. Read the text quickly and match the headings (a-e) with the paragraphs (1-5).

a Saving existing files    c Saving new files
b Naming files           d Defaults

Programs that let you create files or save data have a Save command, usually in the £tte menu. When you save a new file, the Save As dialog box appears (see below). You can let the computer decide the location, the file name and the format, or you can choose these settings yourself. There are many different file formats and they all have advantages and disadvantages. You can save a word-processing document as a web page, for example, or you can save digital photographs in a JPEG format, a TIFF format or many others.

The Save as command is the default command for any new document so the Save As-dialog box appears even if you click gave. If you do not give a new document a file name in a word-processing program, the file name will usually default to the first line in the document The default file name in graphics programs is usually “untitled”.

If you work on an existing file and want to save changes click Save,-not-.Save-As. You can use Save As to save an existing file in a different location, for example, in another drive or folder (using Save In) with a new name (using File name) or in a different format (using Save as type).

Having different folders helps you organize your files, but naming all the different files in one folder is not always easy. You should give files names that describe exactly what they contain so that you can find them easily.