If you have regular access to a PC or laptop it is quite likely you will build up a large number of files. You can leave these scattered across your hard disk, like clothes draped across a bedroom floor, or you can put them neatly away in designated places; organising your files.
Most Operating Systems, including Windows, enable you to create new folders. You can do this by going into one of your ‘Libraries’ and clicking on New Folder at the top right hand of the screen. You are able to name the folder anything you want. Within each folder you can create a subfolder. You can store your files within any of these folders. You can rename any of these files or folders at any time by right clicking over the existing title and choosing Rename from the dropdown menu.
Videos, music, high resolution photographic images and detailed graphics can take up a lot of storage space. You may wish to consider storing these somewhere other than your hard disk or extending the storage capabilities of your PC. Large files can take a long time to download from the Internet and if you are using PAYG Internet this can be an expensive business. You may also find it difficult to transfer large files by email as there is often a limit on email attachment size.
By encoding data in large files like databases you can save a lot of storage space. You can do this by entering a code or an abbreviation instead of the full item. If you are entering countries, for example, France might be encoded as Fr and Germany as Ger. Dates can be entered more simply as numbers e.g. 1.3.11 rather than 1st March 2011. This makes the data entry and data retrieval process so much quicker.