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.

(Collin, S.M.H. [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.

(Collin, S.M.H. [ed.], Dictionary of Multimedia, Peter Collin Publishing, Teddington, Middlesex, 1995, p100)