Acorn Communicator Filestore Manager's Guide

2 THE FILESTORE MANAGER'S
ROLE
This chapter provides general background information about how FileS tore works
and outlines the tasks which the FileStore manager is likely to have to carry out,
once FileStore has been installed.
For an explanation of the computer terms used here, see Appendix 4.
Discs FileStore's main job is to store information for people using Communicators
connected to Econet. It stores this information by recording it on magnetic
discs — three and a half inch floppy discs on FileStore E01, and a 'hard'
Winchester disc on FileStore E20.
The main FileStore unit can contain two floppy discs at a time. Each disc can
hold up to about six hundred thousand 'characters', so at any one time
FileStore can give you access to up to 1.2 million characters, or about 1000
A4 pages of information. You can also change discs to provide additional
storage.
Organisation of FileStore organises the information on its discs into a tree-shaped structure of
information 'directories' and 'files'.
Files
Files are the bundles of information that users store and retrieve. When a
user saves a document prepared using the VIEW word processor, or a
spreadsheet with this month's stock figures, it is stored as a file. A file has a
name, chosen by the person who creates it. This name is then used to refer to
the file, for example when changing it by using VIEW, printing it or wiping
it.
Directories
Directories have names, just like files, but 'contain' files or other directories,
rather than information typed by a user. They are used to organise the files
on a disc, rather like the drawers or folders in a filing cabinet. Thus, each
user has their own directory, to hold their own files.
2 THE FILESTORE MANAGER'S ROLE 3