Drives
        What does that mean anyway?

Miss Daisy says to think of it this way:

Your computer is a place to store and use information, like your games, programs, documents, all that fun stuff you do.  It all has to be kept somewhere. 
A computer has different sections, called drives and files and folders, for keeping those things organized. 

Here's how it works:  

A file cabinet stores things, like your computer stores things.

Drawers & Drives The file cabinet has drawers to keep things in different areas.  A computer has different areas too called drives. It has a Hard Drive, a Floppy Drive, and a CD-ROM Drive. Folders If you look inside one of the drawers of a file cabinet you can see folders that separate things even more.  Guess what… Drives have folders too.  Have you saved something in the My Documents folder? Files Inside each folder are files.  Computers and file cabinets both have files.  An individual document, picture, or sound can be a file. We give our documents file names when we save.

The most common drives on your computer are the C: and the A: drive.

The C: drive is the place to store things inside that particular computer.  The C: drive is also called the hard drive. The My Documents folder is part of the C: drive.

The A: drive is the place to store things onto a floppy disk, so you can take it with you to use on another computer.  The A: drive is also called the floppy drive.

The CD ROM area of your computer has a drive of it’s own too.  It is usually called the D: drive. Some computers have a CDR or CDRW drive that allow you to store files on CDs.

If you want to see what drives your computer has, double click the My Computer icon.
You can also see how much space is taken and how much is free on each drive.  Look at the pie chart shown there.

Can you locate the My Documents folder? When you do, notice the location shown in the Address/Location bar. Does it include "C:"? What does that indicate?

Some computers also have a network drive. A network is an arrangement of individual computers, called workstations, connected electronically to one central computer called a server. A network allows all the workstations to share files stored on the server.  At school you can save your work to the server, using the location specified by your teacher. Why? Two reasons - 1. Convenience - you can then access that file from any computer in the network. You could start a project in the lab, save it to the network, then finish it in your classroom. No need for floppy disks.  2. Backup. A backup, or copy, is routinely made of our network files. If you accidentally lose or damage your project, chances are a copy can be retrieved from a backup. That is much different than relying on a single floppy disk for important work. Floppy disks can fail without any warning, possibly losing all your work. Saving to a single floppy disk is risky!
What drive letter is assigned to the network at school? Do you know where your school's server is located?

Did you know that some drives are referred to as removable? Jump drives, also known as thumb drives or flash drives, can easily be plugged into the computer ( using a USB port) and removed as needed. These removable drives can be used for saving things much like a floppy disk only they store more information and are much more reliable - less likely to fail. Removable drives will only be listed under My Computer when they're actually connected to the computer.

Click here to take Miss Daisy’s Quiz

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