Lecture4

2.3.1.1 Understand how an operating system shows drives, folders, files
in a hierarchical structure.
What are Drives, Folders and Files?
• When accessing a hard disk, whether it is local to your machine or perhaps
located on a network, Windows uses a system of drive letters to serve as
logical pointers to the different physical drives you have access to. From each
drive letter it is possible to access all of your files stored on that particular
physical drive.
• If all of the files were held together in one place on each drive, the system
would be very difficult to use because of the sheer number of files involved.
To help organise your files it is possible to create folders (also referred to as
directories) to help divide and even sub-divide the files stored within the
various logical drives available. A system of hierarchical folders within folders
which represent your hard disk are often referred to as the folder (directory)
tree, in the same way the very top of the file system is known as the root
folder (directory).
• Finally, at the very end of this structure are the various files which we use.
Each file name can be up to 255 characters in length.