You must never
work directly from the M: or A: drives. This can result in you
losing or corrupting your work. Every registered user is allocated a section of filestore on the mainframe computer. This is referred to as your M: drive.
You must never
work directly from the M: or A: drives. This can result in you
losing or corrupting your work.
The connection is made across the network and the machine you are working on may be several miles away from the mainframe. Sometimes the network is busy and this can cause problems in data transfer, so you must never work directly from the M: drive. You should not work from the A: drive (floppy drive) for similar reasons. The recommended method of working is outlined in this section.
It is a good idea to keep copies of all your work on the M: drive as well as on floppy disks.
You may also want to keep extra copies of your work on floppy disks so that you can carry them with you when you need to work somewhere without access to the network; at home during the holidays for instance. Some lecturers will ask you to submit your work on a floppy disk. Floppy disks use the A: drive located in the front of the PC.
The D: drive is
cleared automatically once every 24 hours, so work you leave stored there will
be lost. This is why backups are
essential.
The recommended option on the workstations is saving to the D: drive, which is the hard drive inside the machine you are working on. It is by far the fastest and safest way of working.
Double click the left mouse button on the Explore My Computer
icon on the desktop.
After a moment or two, the Explorer window will appear on the screen. You will see it is divided into two areas: the drives you are connected to and some of the available folders are displayed as a list on the left, while on the right-hand side you can see the contents of the highlighted folder or drive.
Double click on the M: drive icon on the left-hand
side of the screen and
you will see its contents displayed on the right-hand side.
To practice copying, we will create a folder on the D: drive, copy it to the M: drive and then to the A: drive.
Click with
the left mouse button on the D: drive icon.
From the File
Menu, select New, Folder.
A new folder icon will appear with the name box next to it highlighted.
Type in a name for the folder and press Enter.
Position the mouse cursor over the new name,
click the left mouse button once so the file is highlighted in Blue.
From the Edit
menu select Copy.
Click with
the left mouse button on your M: drive, then from the Edit menu
select Paste.
When you have scanned your floppy disk (see later in this document), use the same method to copy your new folder from your M: drive to the A: (3½ Floppy) drive.