Understand how Windows 10 organizes data on your PC

When you work in a program, such as a word processor, you save the document as a file. Files can be saved to your computer’s hard drive to removable storage media, such as USB flash drives (about the size of a gum stick), or to recordable DVDs (small, flat discs that you insert into a drive on your computer) . (Note that you can also save files to an online storage location, such as OneDrive; this is known as cloud storage.)
You can organize files by placing them in the folders you are working in in an app called File Explorer. Windows helps you organize files and folders in the following ways:
1. Make use of the predefined folders. Windows sets up some folders for you as content libraries. For example, the first time you start Windows 10 and open File Explorer, you’ll find folders for Documents, Music, Pictures, Downloads, and Videos that are already set up on your computer.
The Documents folder is a good place to store messages, community group presentations, family budgets, etc. The Pictures folder is where you store picture files, which you can transfer from a digital camera or scanner, receive in an email from a friend or family member, or download from the Internet. Likewise, the Videos folder is a good place to put files from your camcorder or mobile phone. The download folder is where by default the files you download are stored, unless you specify a different location, and the Music folder is where you put the tunes you download or transfer from your music player.
2. Create your own folders. You can create any number of folders and give them a name that defines the types of files you will store there. For example, you can create a folder called Digital Scrapbook if you use your computer to create scrapbooks, or a folder called Taxes where you save email receipts for purchases and electronic tax filing information.

3. Put folders into folders to organize files further. The folder you put inside another folder is called a subfolder. For example, in your Documents folder, you might have a subfolder called List of Holiday Cards that contains your annual holiday newsletter and address lists. In the Pictures folder, you can organize the picture files by creating subfolders starting with the year and then describing the event or topic, such as 2015 Home Garden Project, 2014 Christmas, 2014 San Francisco Trip, 2015 Family Reunion, 2015 Pet Pictures, and so on. In the following figure, you can see the subfolders and files stored inside the Pictures folder.
4. Move files and folders from one place to another. The ability to move files and folders helps you when you decide it’s time to reorganize the information on your computer. For example, when you start using your computer, you can save all your documents in the My Documents folder. That’s okay for a while, but over time, you may have dozens of documents saved in that one folder. To make it easier to locate your files, you can create subfolders by topic and move files to them.