Jan's Working with Windows:

File: 

Each document, whether it is a plain text file or a letter in Word or music  or the code to run a program , is called a file.

Folder: 

Files are grouped together in folders , also called directories by folks who are used to certain other operating systems.

Disk or Drive:

Technically, a disk is an object on which you store your files and a drive is the device that reads from and writes to the storage media. Often these words are used as though they were the same thing. Some 'drives' are not discs at all, like flash drives.

Your files and folders are stored on your computer's hard disk  , or an external drive connected to your computer, or on a network drive , or on some kind of removable media like a floppy disk , a CD or DVD , a USB drive , or another kind of removable disk.

A large hard disk can be divided into several logical drives to make the space easier to work with and maintain. Older operating systems cannot handle drives larger than 2 GB unless they are divided up this way. These logical drives display as additional hard drives.

Drive Names: Drives are named with a letter plus a colon.

A:    The floppy drive is A: and a second floppy drive is B:. Yes, computers are still reserving letters for these ancient drive types. In the olden days, about 1982, our first computer was tops with dual 5¼" floppy drives!

C:    The hard drive or solid state drive that contains the operating system is C:. Logical drives and external drives get letters that follow C:.

D:    Your CD or DVD drive uses the first letter after all of your hard drives, so it will be D: only if you have only one hard disk and it has no logical partitions.

Network drives are usually further down the alphabet. Many networks start the network drives at Z and go up the alphabet. A school I used to teach at assigned the name O: to the network drive where a user could store documents. When I logged onto a computer on the network, I could access that drive, no matter which computer I was using.

Removable drives like flash drives are assigned a letter when they are connected. Those letters can be reused by different devices as you plug in and remove various storage devices. You can assign a drive letter to your device so that it will always use that letter when it is attached to a computer. You must consider whether you will run into a computer that already has a drive with that letter name! More than just confusion can occur. Duplicate drive names are just not allowed, so you will not be able to view or use your files.

Warning: Drives may or may not show if empty
Some computers display a CD or DVD drive even when the drive is empty and some do not.
Computers with built-in slots for removable media (USB, Smart Media, SD, Memory Stick, etc) often show those drives even if they are empty. A printer that is connected to your computer may show as a drive if it has slots for media, even when those are empty. There is a setting in the Folder Options dialog on the View tab that lets you 'Hide empty drives in the Computer folder'. But it may not hide those media slots that are built in.

Path:

The drive and folders you must go through to get to the folder or file that you want form the path to the file. A path always starts with a drive letter.

Examples:
The path C:\Windows\notepad.exe  leads to the file that starts Notepad.
The path C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer leads to the folder that holds Internet Explorer's program files.

Note that a path uses a back slash \ while a web address (a URL) uses a forward slash /.