- Before you store and organize your own files,
it's important to understand the folder structure
that already exists in Windows,
so you can work within that established organization.
So I'm going to open File Explorer
using the shortcut on the task bar
and I want to go to the starting point in my file structure.
So on the left, I'll select this PC,
then I'll open my main system drive, that's the C drive.
I'll double click on that.
And I do want to mention
that the way the files and folders are displayed
in this window might look a little different on your screen.
Don't worry about that for now.
We'll talk about how to change the view settings
in another video.
So I'm in the C drive
and this is the contents of my main storage drive.
You might see more folders here than I do,
but here's the easy part.
You don't have to worry about most of these folders.
Now the program files and program files X86 folders
are kind of interesting.
These folders are where your applications are stored.
When you go to the start menu
and you go to the list of all applications,
those are all actually stored in one of these folders.
Now you could open up one of these folders
and go through the sub folders
and actually find an individual file
that you can double click to launch an application,
but most people never do that.
You usually just launch your applications
from the start menu.
But still, it's just good to know
where your programs are stored.
So I'm going to click the back button in the top left
to back up to the starting point on my C drive again.
Now the one folder here
that I think is the most important is the user's folder.
So I'm going to open that one.
And here, you will find a folder with your name on it
or an abbreviation of your name.
This is your home folder.
It's where all of your personal files should be stored.
Documents, pictures, music,
everything that belongs to you, except your applications.
Of course if you have an external storage drive,
you can feel free to store files there as well
but for files on your main storage drive,
this is your stuff.
If you have more than one user account
set up on your computer,
each user will have their own home folder
and you cannot see inside of another user's home folder
unless you sign into their account.
So I want to open my home folder
so I'll double click the folder with my name on it.
And what I see here are the default folders
that are set up by the computer, inside of each home folder.
These sub folders are pre-made
for the different types of files that you might have.
Now you don't have to use these folders,
but using them keeps things much cleaner
and lots of applications assume
that your documents are in your documents folder,
or your videos are in your videos folder and so on.
So I strongly recommend you follow this pattern
and store all of your personal files
in this pre-made structure.
Now there's one important thing I'll point out here.
In these pre-made folders,
you should see a desktop folder, a documents folder,
and a pictures folder.
You might just see those here, directly in your home folder,
or you might have a folder called OneDrive
and if you open it up,
those three folders might be inside there.
In another video, I will explain how OneDrive works
and why these folders might be in one location
rather than the other.
But regardless of whether these three folders
are in the OneDrive folder
or just in the normal home folder itself,
the idea is the same.
All of this is stored inside of the home folder,
even if there is an extra level of organization
for some of them.
It's important to store your personal files
somewhere in the home folder.
Later, when you learn how to create new folders,
I strongly encourage you to work
with this existing structure.
This helps you stay organized
and keeps your files tied to your user account.