Don't Work Off Floppies

People who are new to computers have a tendency to store their data files, including Word documents, on floppy disks. They think this is safer, in case the hard disk has a problem. This may have been true in the early days of hard disks, but there are a number of reasons not to use floppy disks to store your documents:

• It is much slower loading and saving documents.
• Floppy disks are more prone to disk errors than hard disks.
• It is too easy to misplace a floppy disk.
• If the size of your document becomes larger than the available space on your floppy, you may lose the entire file.

In addition, it is not unusual for new users to remove the floppy disk from the disk drive before they are done editing the file on Word, or before Word has completed saving the file to disk. If you do this, you run the risk of corrupting the file and losing it.