Your workstation has at least one hard disk drive, and it is defined by a single letter, usually “C”. There are folders on the hard disk drive, and files that reside within each folder. Think of this as a physical file cabinet in your office. The file cabinet equates to the hard drive on your workstation, each drawer in the file cabinet is the same as a folder on the hard drive, and the manila folders in the file cabinet drawers represent the files inside the folder on the hard drive. Organizing files on your workstation is easier than maintaining files in a filing cabinet.

File Types, or Extensions

Organizing files by file type, or extension, and defining a folder for each file type, is one common method. A file type, or extension, is that part of the filename to the right of the period. Text files are usually succeeded by the three letter extension “.txt”, Microsoft Word documents are “.doc”, and Microsoft Excel files have the extension “.xls”. All files created by an export from First Edition, for example, should be saved to a folder designated specifically for exported files. All invoice and renewal forms (“.docs”) should be saved to a specific folder, and all spreadsheets saved to yet another separate folder.

Network Drives

In addition to your “C” drive, you may have drives defined by other letters. D, E, and F are usually reserved for CD and DVD drives, while other letters may be assigned to accommodate other external devices. If you are on a network, there will likely be letters assigned to network hard drives. These are drives allocated for storage of application data files such as those for First Edition. All data on network drives are typically backed up on a regular basis by your IT department. Therefore, it is important that all non-expendable files reside in folders created on a network drive.

Backups, Archives

Although the IT Department is responsible for maintaining regular backups of all network drives, you may want to consider creating your own backups. Creating a copy of the entire First Edition data folder prior to every Update is recommended. Archiving Adds and Drops files, and other audit related files after each Update is also recommended.

Note: see the Knowledge Base article “Data Backup” for suggestions on schedules for rotating backup sets.

Summary

Use of First Edition application folders (where the First Edition programs are installed, usually c:\fe) on your workstation, or First Edition data folders, is never recommended for storing files other than those specific to First Edition. Storing other files in First Edition application or data folders increases the risk of deleting or corrupting files essential to the operation of First Edition.