up249 Advanced GIS

File Management

For your final it would be a very good idea to keep all of your files in one directory on your hard drive.

It is not a good idea to work off of a floppy disk on your A: drive. Files may become too large and the program may tend to run slower if it is working off the A: drive.

It is a very good idea to keep a written log of what you name your files and what they contain. Every time you create or save a new file you should write down its name. Every time you delete or remove a file from your project then note that you no longer need it. If you ever need to recreate your project this will save time and make your life much easier. Plus if you keep all files in one directory you won't have to look everywhere for a specific file.

Also periodically save back-up copies of all of your files. You can do this easily by going into File Manager or Explorer and copying your entire directory containing all of your files. For example, say I made a directory called C:\Midterm in which all of my ArcView files (.apr, .shp, .dbf) are saved. To make a back-up, I create a new directory called C:\Backup and then copy over every file from the Midterm directory to the Backup directory.

If for some reason my project is corrupted and I lose the information, then I can use my back-up copies. Here's how I do it. Remember that the .apr file simply REFERENCES my .dbf and .shp files. So when I made the back-up copy of the .apr file and placed it in the Backup directory, that project still references the .dbf and .shp files in the Midterm directory.

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In order to cut this link, I have three choices:

1. I can delete all of the files in the Midterm directory, which is OK since I have made back-ups.

2. I can rename all of the files in the Midterm directory, so that when my .apr file in the Backup directory tries to reference those files in the Midterm directory, it won't find them.

3. I can move all of the files in the Midterm directory to another directory (but NOT the Backup directory!). This way, when the .apr file in the Backup directory tries to reference those files in the Midterm directory, it won't find them.

Once I have done one of the three choices above, I can go to ArcView and open the .apr from the Backup directory. ArcView will ask me where my .shp and .dbf files are (since it will be referencing the Midterm directory) and I will tell it to look in the Backup directory instead. Once ArcView successfully opens the project, I save it so that it will remember the new locations of all my .dbf and .shp files.