inserted with the metal end going into the slot first and the printed label
on top.
2. With the disk in the disk drive, press the top of the on/off switch on
the back of the computer to turn on the Macintosh.
You hear a beep, and then a whirring sound as the computer starts reading
from the disk.
In a moment a picture of a smiling Macintosh appears on your screen.
It is soon replaced by a screen called the Macintosh desktop. You are ready
to continue.
What just happened involves several key concepts that will help you
understand your Macintosh.
Disks
In order to operate, your Macintosh needs information. In the computer
world, information is stored on disks. The System Startup disk you inserted
is one kind of disk called a floppy disk (because the material inside the
plastic case is very thin and flexible). The Macintosh Basics disk is also a
floppy disk.
You can think of a computer and disks like a cassette tape player and tapes.
Just as cassette tape players make sounds using information stored on tapes,
computers do their work using information stored on disks, like the System
Startup and Macintosh Basics disks.
Hard disks
There is another kind of disk called a hard disk that serves the same purpose
as a floppy disk. (It is a place to store information for the computer.) But
hard disks are different from floppy disks in two ways. First, a hard disk
is a piece of computer equipment. It is not something that you can insert
and eject from the disk drive on your computer. Second, hard disks can store
many times more information than floppy disks.
Hard disks come in two forms: internal (built into your computer), and
external (a separate box that sits under or beside your computer). You cannot
tell if you have an internal hard disk by looking at your computer when it's
turned off, but when it's on you can tell by checking whether the hard disk
icon is on the screen.
Checking for hard disks
Check to see if you have a hard disk now by following these steps:
1. Find the System Startup icon on your screen.
It is the picture of the disk in the upper-right corner of the screen.
2. Look directly below it less than an inch.
If you see an icon that looks like a rectangular box, that means you have a
hard disk. The icon (usually named Macintosh HD) represents the hard disk. If
you have no external hard disk connected to your computer, your hard disk is
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