Hello SRI DBA.

When you install Oracle on your system, for the first time, and you choose to have the first database created, Oracle places the data files in one directory while placing the files related to DBA in another directory, both of which are placed in, yet another directory. The general setup is like this for datafiles c:\oracle\oradatat\db_name, likewise the setup is like this for dba related files c:\oracle\admin\db_name.

When you create a database manually you can "specify" where you want ALL of your files to be located, for example, when I create a database here is how I lay it out c:\db_name, then follows all of the directorys inside the db_name directory. There will be files that must be fetched from c:\oracle\ora_whatever, but the gist, for me, is convenience

Hop I helped.

Rick