Data is a
collection of facts made up of numbers, characters and
symbols, stored on a computer in such a way that it can be processed by
the computer. Data is different from information in that it is composed
of facts stored in machine-readable form. When the facts are processed
by the computer into a form which can be understood by people, the data
becomes information.
(S.M.H. Collin [ed.], Dictionary of Multimedia, Peter Collin Publishing,
Teddington, Middlesex, 1995, p63)
A file is a
named section of a disk that contains data and can be
accessed as a single unit.
(S.M.H. Collin [ed.], Dictionary of Multimedia, Peter Collin Publishing,
Teddington, Middlesex, 1995, p100)