File Storage Technologies

What is a file ?
A file is an object on a computer that stores data, information, settings, or commands used with a computer program. In a graphical user interface (GUI) such as Microsoft Windows, files display as icons that relate to the program that opens the file.

In other terms we can say that, a file is a container in a computer system for storing information. Files used in computers are similar in features to that of paper documents used in library and office files. There are different types of files such as text files, data files, directory files, binary and graphic files, and these different types of files store different types of information. In a computer operating system, files can be stored on optical drives, hard drives or other types of storage devices.

Most modern computer systems provide security or protection measures against file corruption or damage. The data contained in the files could range from system-generated information to user-specified information. File management is done with the help of operating systems, third-party tools or done manually at times with the help of the user.

The basic operations that can be performed on a file are:

• Creation of a new file
• Modification of data or file attributes
• Reading of data from the file
• Opening the file in order to make the contents available to other programs
• Writing data to the file
• Closing or terminating a file operation

In order to read or modify data in a file, specific software associated with the file extension is needed.