How does Vista organize files and folders on drives?

Vista organizes folders and files in a hierarchical system. The drive is the highest level of the hierarchy. You can put all of your files on a drive without creating any folders, but that is like putting all of your papers in a file cabinet without organizing them into folders. It works fine if you have only a few files, but as the number of files increases, there comes a point at which things are difficult to find. To avoid this, create folders and put related material together in folders.

A diagram of typical drives and how they are organized is shown here.

At the highest level, you have some folders and perhaps some files. You can open any of the folders and put additional files and folders into them. This creates a hierarchy.