Mercer County Library System
There are many different methods of saving your files. Our classes cover three of them - local storage to your computer, portable storage to external hardware like flash drives, and cloud storage.
Local storage saves everything to the C: drive on your computer. This drive is the main storage area of your computer. If your computer was a filing cabinet, the C: drive would be the largest and most full drawer. This drive is machine-specific, meaning you can't access your computer's C: drive from another computer. This is fine if you do all your work on a personal device, but can make it hard to work on files outside of your home.
One way to save your files to make it easier to work on across devices is by using a flash drive. You may also hear these referred to as a USB drive or thumb drive, all are different names for the same thing. Using a flash drive saves your files directly to that device, so you can carry the drive with you and plug it into multiple computers. Flash drives may have less storage space than the C: drive, and if you lose the flash drive itself, your files are gone.
A third way to save your files is to the cloud. Cloud storage essentially means your data is being saved on someone else's computer, and not taking up storage space on yours. The computers utilized by cloud storage are huge computers called servers, that hold a ton of people's data at once. You use your internet connection to connect to the server, and then input your login to access your specific data. In class we utilize cloud storage through Google Drive. Other common cloud storage services are Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, and iCloud. Cloud storage can be accessed from any computer with an internet connection, and often through mobile phone apps as well. This means you can work on them from anywhere as long as there is a device and WiFi. If you ever have an internet outage you cannot access your files (but you aren't losing them since they are saved elsewhere), and depending on the program you may have to pay for the storage space you use. Google Drive gives you 15 gigabytes for free.