Different ways to save computer files

Imagine walking into a grocery store. Now imagine that there are no sections, no aisles, and no organization. Not only does this reduce frustration, but it also boosts your productivity and efficiency.

There is no magical formula for the perfect folder structure. Each business is different, so your file structure should reflect how your specific business and employees work. Keep in mind that a good file structure should work for everyone in your organization, not just you. Your ultimate goal is to create a logical hierarchy that gives every file a home, making things easy to find and impossible to lose.

Shared cloud storage can be a good option too. Keep your business folders for business. One of the most effective ways to organize your files is by category. Again, think of the grocery store. Foods are organized into sections like produce, dairy, packaged foods, etc. Many business activities think reports or events are reoccurring, so organizing by year or month makes it easy to identify the most current files and find past versions. Despite many external solutions for digital files, some people still store their photos, videos, and content files on their desktop or laptop.

The only problem with this method is that your computer can quickly become cluttered with thousands of files. It slows your prized piece of hardware computer down. When you want to find a digital file you probably expect that file to come flying up on your screen in an instant. Yet — anyone who keeps a lot of photos on a computer knows it can take minutes, sometimes hours, to find one — even if you keep it on your desktop.

Most importantly, just storing these digital files on a desktop leaves them vulnerable to viruses, damage, or theft. That lack of backup led many to explore cold storage. This includes separate drives, such as flash and thumb drives, as well as SD cards and dare we even say DVDs? The data is fragmented and not easily accessible — will you have access to a machine with a disk drive when the time comes to fire up the DVD?

Plus, it can be easily lost or damaged. Also, external drives often need maintenance after a few years like any other piece of equipment, requiring an extra cost to recover files if they become corrupted and the need to migrate all that information to a new device arises.

As social media profiles grew in popularity, people soon realized they served as a way to store photos and videos where they could always be accessed. Plus, these social media sites provided a way to create albums for easy access and sharing.

Yet, issues exist. First, images are saved in low resolution. Other storage solutions save images and video in high resolution. Additionally, images on social media can be inadvertently deleted and lost forever. In many cases, social media companies make no guarantee as to what is stored on their platform or not. Even more daunting is that social media sites admit they actively mine your personal data.

Even if you deleted your account, they said the data would would still exist on their servers somewhere. Now, there are ways to change that to a certain degree. However, as long as you continue storing photos and video on social media, you should assume your personal data may never truly be your own.

This digital storage option is increasingly popular for its many benefits, despite some shortcomings. Companies like Dropbox emerged to offer an option for digital files that addressed existing storage problems.

With cloud-based document solutions becoming more and more popular, chances are you're going to be doing some work in Google Drive. While these files are always saved in the cloud, you can download and save them to your computer so that you can open them without accessing the internet. Plug your flash drive into your computer. Then open the "Files" application this is for Windows.

Then select the file s you want to put on there and then drag it to your flash drive. Not Helpful 2 Helpful 1. Just click and hold the file and then just take it to the flash drive and then just release the file. Not Helpful 1 Helpful 1. Press CTRL down first though. Not Helpful 0 Helpful 2. Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered.

Save often! You'll never regret saving more often than you need to. Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0. Submit a Tip All tip submissions are carefully reviewed before being published. You Might Also Like How to. How to. Co-authors: 8. Updated: September 7, Categories: File Manipulation.

Article Summary X 1. Italiano: Salvare un File. Nederlands: Een bestand opslaan. Bahasa Indonesia: Menyimpan Berkas. Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 73, times.

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