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Depending on your screen’s current layout, some of
the following onscreen tools may work more easily:
✓ Right-click menus: Right-click a file or folder
and choose Cut or Copy, depending on whether
you want to move or copy it. Then right-click
your destination folder and choose Paste. It’s
simple, it always works, and you needn’t bother
placing any windows side by side.
✓ Ribbon commands: In File Explorer, click your
file or folder; then click the Ribbon’s Home tab
and choose Copy To (or Move To). A menu
drops down, listing some common locations.
Don’t spot the right spot? Then click Choose
Location, click through the drive and folders to
reach the destination folder, and Windows
transports the file accordingly. Although a bit
cumbersome, this method works if you know
the exact location of the destination folder.
✓ Navigation Pane: This panel along File
Explorer’s left edge lists popular locations:
libraries, drives, and oft-used folders. That lets
you drag and drop a file into a spot on the
Navigation Pane, sparing you the hassle of open-
ing a destination folder.
After you install a program on your computer,
don’t ever move that program’s folder. Programs
wedge themselves into Windows. Moving the
program may break it, and you’ll have to reinstall
it. Feel free to move a program’s shortcut (short-
cut icons contain a little arrow), though.
Writing to CDs and DVDs
Most computers today write information to CDs and
DVDs using a flameless approach known as burning.
To see whether you’re stuck with an older drive that
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can’t burn discs, remove any discs from inside the
drive; then open File Explorer from the Start screen
and look at the icon for your CD or DVD drive.
Because computers always speak in secret code,
here’s what you can do with the disc drives in
your computer:
✓ DVD-RW: Read and write to CDs and DVDs.
✓ BD-ROM: Read and write to CDs and DVDs, plus
read Blu-ray discs.
✓ BD-RE: These can read and write to CDs, DVDs,
and Blu-ray discs.
If your PC has two CD or DVD burners, tell
Windows 8 which drive you want to handle your
disc-burning chores: Right-click the drive,
choose Properties, and click the Recording tab.
Then choose your favorite drive in the top box.
Buying the right kind of blank CDs
and DVDs for burning
Stores sell two types of CDs: CD-R (short for
CD-Recordable) and CD-RW (short for
CD-ReWritable). Here’s the difference:
✓ CD-R: Most people buy CD-R discs because
they’re very cheap and they work fine for
storing music or files. You can write to them
until they fill up; then you can’t write to
them anymore.
✓ CD-RW: Techies sometimes buy CD-RW discs
for making temporary backups of data. You can
write information to them, just like CD-Rs. But
when a CD-RW disc fills up, you can erase it and
start over with a clean slate.
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DVDs come in both R and RW formats, just like CDs,
so the preceding R and RW rules apply to them, as
well. Most DVD burners sold in the past few years
can write to any type of blank CD or DVD.
Buying blank DVDs for older drives is chaos:
The manufacturers fought over which storage
format to use, confusing things for everybody.
To buy the right blank DVD, check your comput-
er’s receipt to see what formats its DVD burner
needs: DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, or DVD+RW.
Copying files to or from a CD or DVD
CDs and DVDs once hailed from the school of simplic-
ity: You simply slid them into your CD player or DVD
player. But as soon as those discs graduated to PCs,
the problems grew. When you create a CD or DVD,
you must tell your PC what you’re copying and where
you intend to play it: Music for a CD player? Photo
slide shows for a TV’s DVD player? Or files to store on
your computer?
If you choose the wrong answer, your disc won’t
work, and you’ve created yet another coaster.
Here are the Disc Creation rules:
✓ Music: To create a CD that plays music in your
CD player or car stereo, you need to fire up the
Windows 8 Media Player program and burn an
audio CD.
✓ Photo slide shows: Windows 8 no longer includes
the Windows DVD Maker bundled with Windows
Vista and Windows 7. To create photo slide-
shows, you now need a third-party program.
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If you just want to copy files to a CD or DVD, perhaps
to save as a backup or to give to a friend, stick around.
Follow these steps to write files to a new, blank CD or
DVD. (If you’re writing files to a CD or DVD that
you’ve written to before, jump ahead to Step 4.)
1. Insert the blank disc into your disc burner.
Then click or tap the Notification box that
appears in the screen’s upper-right corner.
2. When the Notification box asks how you’d like to
proceed, click the box’s Burn Files to Disc option.
3. In the resulting Burn a Disc dialog box, type a
name for the disc, describe how you want to use
the disc, and click Next.
Windows can burn the files to the disc two differ-
ent ways:
• Like a USB flash drive: This method lets you
read and write files to the disc many times, a
handy way to use discs as portable file carriers.
• With a CD/DVD player: If you plan to play your
disc on a fairly new home stereo disc player
that’s smart enough to read files stored in sev-
eral different formats, select this method.
Armed with the disc’s name, Windows 8 prepares
the disc for incoming files.
4. Tell Windows 8 which files to write to disc.
Now that your disc is ready to accept the files,
tell Windows 8 what information to send its way.
You can do this in any of several ways:
• Right-click the item you want to copy, be it a
single file, folder, or selected files and folders.
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When the pop-up menu appears, choose
Send To and select your disc burner from
the menu.
• Drag and drop files and/or folders on top of
the burner’s icon in File Explorer.
• From your My Music, My Pictures, or My
Documents folder, click the Share tab and
then click Burn to Disc. This button copies all
of that folder’s files (or just the files you’ve
selected) to the disc as files.
• Tell your current program to save the infor-
mation to the disc rather than to your hard
drive.
No matter which method you choose, a progress
window appears, showing the disc burner’s prog-
ress. When the progress window disappears,
Windows has finished burning the disc.
5. Close your disc-burning session by ejecting
the disc.
When you’re through copying files to the disc,
push your drive’s Eject button (or right-click the
drive’s icon in File Explorer and choose Eject).
If you try to copy a large batch of files to a
disc— more than will fit — Windows 8 com-
plains immediately. Copy fewer files at a time,
perhaps spacing them out over two discs.
Most programs let you save files directly to
disc. Choose Save from the File menu and select
your CD burner. Put a disc (preferably one
that’s not already filled) into your disc drive to
start the process.
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Chapter 3: Storage: Internal, External, and in the Sky
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Working with Flash Drives
and Memory Cards
Digital camera owners eventually become acquainted
with memory cards — those little plastic squares that
replaced the awkward rolls of film. Windows 8 can read
digital photos directly from the camera after you find its
cable and plug it into your PC. But Windows 8 can also
grab photos straight off the memory card, a method
praised by any owner who has lost her camera’s cables.
The secret is a memory card reader: a little slot-filled
box that stays plugged into your PC. Slide your
memory card into the slot, and your PC can read the
card’s files, just like reading files from any other
folder. Most office supply and electronics stores sell
memory card readers that accept most popular
memory card formats, and some computers even
come with built-in card readers.
The beauty of card readers is that there’s nothing
new to figure out: Windows 8 treats your inserted
card just like an ordinary folder. Insert your card, and
a folder appears on your screen to show your digital
camera photos. The same drag-and-drop and cut-and-
paste rules covered earlier in this chapter still apply,
letting you move the pictures or other files off the
card and into a folder in your Pictures library.
Flash drives — also known as thumbdrives —
work just like memory card readers. Plug the
flash drive into one of your PC’s USB ports, and
the drive appears as an icon (shown in the
margin) in File Explorer, ready to be opened
with a double-click.
✓ First, the warning: Formatting a card or disk
wipes out all its information. Never format a
card or disk unless you don’t care about the
information it currently holds.
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Windows 8 For Dummies, Dell Pocket Edition
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✓ Now, the procedure: If Windows complains that
a newly inserted card isn’t formatted, right-click
its drive and choose Format. (This problem hap-
pens most often with brand-new or damaged
cards.) Sometimes formatting also helps one
gadget use a card designed for a different
gadget— your digital camera may be able to
use your MP3 player’s card, for example.
SkyDrive: Your Cubbyhole
in the Clouds
Storing files inside your computer works fine while
you’re at home or work. And when leaving your com-
puter, you can tote files on flash drives, CDs, DVDs,
and portable hard drives — if you remember to grab
them on the way out. But how can you access your
files from anywhere, even if you’ve forgotten to
pack them?
Microsoft’s solution to that problem is called
SkyDrive. Basically, it’s your own private storage
space on the Internet where you can dump your files
and then retrieve them whenever you find an Internet
connection. Romantic engineers refer to Internet-
stashed files as cloud storage.
The Windows 8 Start screen comes with the free
SkyDrive app, but you need a few extra things in
order to use it:
✓ Microsoft account: You need a Microsoft
account in order to upload or retrieve files to
SkyDrive. Chances are, you created a Microsoft
account when you first created your account on
your Windows 8 PC. (I describe Microsoft
accounts in Chapter 1.)
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Chapter 3: Storage: Internal, External, and in the Sky
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✓ An Internet connection: Without an Internet
signal, either wireless or wired, your files stay
floating in the clouds, away from you and your
computer.
✓ Patience: Uploading files always takes longer
than downloading files. Although you can
upload small files fairly quickly, larger files
like digital photos can take several minutes
to upload.
Accessing files with SkyDrive
To add, view, or download files you’ve stored on
SkyDrive from the Start screen’s SkyDrive app, as well
as to add your own, follow these steps:
1. From the Start screen, open the SkyDrive app.
When opened, the SkyDrive app (shown in
Figure 3-8) may react any of several different
ways depending on whether you’ve used
SkyDrive before, and how.
SkyDrive lists your stored folders along the left
edge and your files along the right.
2. To copy files from your computer to SkyDrive,
choose Upload and locate the desired files on
your computer.
To add files, right-click a blank part of the
SkyDrive program; when the app’s menu
appears along the screen’s bottom edge,
choose Upload (shown in the margin). The
Start screen’s File Picker appears, shown in
Figure 3-9, ready for you to choose the files
you’d like to store in the clouds.
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Windows 8 For Dummies, Dell Pocket Edition
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Figure 3-8: The SkyDrive app lets you keep files in a private
Internet cubbyhole.
When you spot the folder containing the files you
want, click it to open it and see its files.
3. Choose the files you’d like to upload to
SkyDrive.
Click the files you’d like to upload; if you click
one by mistake, click it again to remove it from
the upload list. Each time you click a file,
SkyDrive adds the file to its upload list, shown
along the app’s bottom edge in Figure 3-9.
Jump to another folder and click more files;
SkyDrive adds those file to the list along the
bottom, as well.
4. Click the Add to SkyDrive button.
SkyDrive begins uploading your selected files to
the sky. Documents float up there pretty quickly,
but digital music and photos can take a lot of time.
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dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.
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