Your Monitor, Computer Unit, Hard Disk Drive

Your Monitor

Refer to the documentation provided with your monitor, for more information about your monitor characteristics and usage.

Computer Unit

Whether it's dealing with one of your personal letters or with a software program you bought from your reseller, your computer is capable of elaborating data in an electronic format, and storing them on its drives (hard disk, floppy disc, etc.).

To save data (write) or to recall them (read), your computer uses one of the following drives:

Hard Disk Drive

The hard disk drive is located inside your computer, and it's generally referred to as C:.

It's your computer archive: your computer operating system and data are located on it. It has a lot of storage capacity, but you need to check from time to time that storage is still available on it.

Floppy Disk Drive

This drive uses 3.5 inches removable floppy disks, and it is called A:. It is very useful when you need to store small files.

Optical CD-ROM , CD-RW, and CD-DVD Drives Optical drives use CDs (R, RW, or DVD Compact Disc type).

According to the driver mounted on your computer, a common CD-ROM reader, a CD-RW reader and writer, or a DVD may be available (ask your reseller which drive your computer is equipped with).

If you have a normal CD-ROM reader, your drive is only capable of reading data, but won't be able to write on a CD-ROM. This is because, unlike a floppy disk, a CD-ROM has a read only memory, which means that your computer will be able to read data from a CD, but won't be able to write data on it (see note). This drive is generally called D:. On some computers, the CD-ROM may be identified by a different letter. To identify drives letters, refer to My Computer.

Note: There are CDs you can write only once ( R ), CDs you can write more than once (RW), and DVDs, but to write them you need a special drive.

These new optical drives are similar to common CD-ROM drives, and are CD-ROM compatible. This means that if you are using a DVD drive or a CD-RW drive, you can use not only DVDs, but also normal CD-ROMs, CD-Rs, and CD-RWs.