How do you keep the files on your hard drive organized?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am a digital packrat. I probably have close to 1 million files between the three harddrives on my computer. My current configuration is C: (80GB), Q: (160GB), R: (70GB) and Y: (10GB) (R & Y are two partitions on the same 80GB drive). I just reformatted C, R & Y (one at a time by moving the contents to the other drive and doing A LOT of DVD backing up) and installed a fresh copy of Windows 2003 onto it, and the plan right now is having the OS and my data files on C, multimedia holding spot on Q (hey, at 13GB an HOUR, DV filespace can add up fast!), R:\Program Files using most of that drive, and Y as the pagefile.sys and scratch disk.

That takes care of the first step. Now, as far as individual file organization. I mostly save and download stuff to the desktop. When my desktop has so many files that I can’t even make out the wallpaper anymore, I create a new folder and move everything into it, and start over. So far, I have 4 folders like this, each containing a random assortment of files. I’m still not sure of the most ideal to organize everything. I have a ton of random note text files, mp3s which aren’t worthy of ipod space, images (photos I’ve taken/collected, as well as more random pr0n than I’d like to admit to), word/excel/access files, multimedia projects (my Q drive, which holds these, is the most organized of them all, since I just make folders in the root directory for all files in each project), etc. You get the picture. Basically, everything I’ve obtained in the last 11 years is still somewhere on there. 320GB of space, and about 15GB free at the moment (I have to keep replacing/upgrading my drives every year or so…my latest was switching out a 80 for a 160)

So how do YOU keep your harddrives organized (both methods and theories)?

2

The first step is admitting you have a problem.

There, doesn’t that feel better?

Seriously, when you say that you have a million files, don’t you think that throwing away about 950 thousand of them might be a good start? Do you actually USE more than 50 thousand of those files?

I figure if I have a file on my PC that I haven’t touched in 2 or 3 years, I don’t need to have that file on my PC.

I think the task you’ve set before yourself is insurmountable.

3

How do I keep my files organized?

I don’t. That’s what the search function is for…

4

Ordovician

bootable [yes, MacOS 8.1];
main purpose: primary applications folder
Contains:
• Audio Applicatons
• Graphics Applications
• Info Management Applications (database & spreadsheet)
• Screens (Desktop Pix; “Wallpaper” to you PC folks)
• Telecom and Internet Apps (browsers, FTP, email, etc.)
• Video Applications

Cambrian

bootable [yes, MacOS 8.6]
main purpose: Utility applications
contents: mostly a huge folder full of formatters, scavengers, extractors, compressors, decoders, probers, installermakers, benchmarkers, cachesettings-extractors, ramdisk-creators, battery-resetters, installer-file peekers & extractors, network probers, defragmenters, corrupion-fixers, file-format converters, ghostscript interpreters, drive-mounters, port-enablers, security encrypters, raw hex editors, “skin” selectors & editors, virus scanners, screen rulers, and so on, although I’ve also got Script Editor and ResEdit and stuff like that in there.

Also (dating back to a time when Ordovician was a much more crowded partition on a much smaller drive), Word and Text Processors is on this drive, too, although I should really move it to Ordovician where it belongs.

Devonian.

Bootable [yes, MacOS 9.0].
main purpose: web site files, and data files referenced by multiple operating systems.
contains: Eudora Folder containing mail and settings used by all OSs; telephone and address database (FileMaker) referenced by Apple menu of all OSs; also, for no particular reason, Remote Access Protocols software like Timbuktu and VNC, along with VPN front ends and whatnot, are on this drive.

Permian

bootable [yes, MacOS 9.2.2]
main purpose: movie files (projects under development); also serves as auxiliary drive for booting Classic under OS X.

Silurian

bootable [no]
purpose: personal files; filing cabinet of all my various letters, projects, etc, other than what’s under development. I’m a FileMaker geek so much of it is taken up with writeups and bits and pieces of FileMaker projects, launcher files, etc.

Proterozoic

bootable [no, not natively at any rate]
purpose: virtual hard disks for emulators. Contains:
• PC Hard Disks (W95, W98, NT Server, W2K Server, Win3.11, Darwin Intel, RH Linux 8, FreeBSD, MSDOS)
•Older Macintosh Disks (Systems 0.9, 1.1, 2, 3, 4.0, 4.1, 6.0.8, 7.0, 7.5.5, 7.6, and 8.6)
• Amiga HD0 etc disks for UAE

Mississippian, one of the two “Carboniferous” disks (did someone say “aaaah”?)

bootable: [yes, MacOS X 10.2.8]
purpose: MacOS X and Apple apps that wont’ get updated unless I leave them in /Applications

Pennsylvanian

bootable [yes, MacOS X 10.3.8]
purpose: my everyday bootup drive. MacOS X and Apple apps, same as with Jaguar partition above.

File Vault

bootable [yes, MacOS 9.0]
purpose: MP3 files, FileMaker databases from my BBDO era (too much for Silurian), backups of installers.

5

Just give your files intuitive filenames (like application/movies’ full names instead of some form of appxv460.zip) and combine that with a desktop search utility like Google Search.

But really, do you really need that many files? You can probably find most of them again when they’re really needed by just looking on the Internet.

6

Photos and media that I download are automatically stored onto DVD-RAM so they don’t take up any space on my hard drive. Everything else I download to to a folder on C: called “dl” which I have historically used to mean “Downloads”. When it gets so large that I have to scroll 3 or 4 pages to see everything, then I copy it’s contents to a DVD-RAM disc I have that is organized into the following folders: Productivity, Drivers, Utils, Games, and Other.

That’s pretty much how I do it. Other than the installed programs that are managed by XP, I don’t keep a lot of stuff on my hard drive.

7

I have two hard drives: a 20GB (my C drive) and a 120GB Maxtor external hard drive. I keep everything I care about on the external hard drive, meaning that my C drive only has system files and a few easily replaced .exe files on it. I like this setup because it’s very easy to transfer files between computers. For example, I occasionally bring my external hard drive into work and copy whatever new music I have.

8

I have divided my life into four mutually exclusive category folders, which function as my four main subdivisions of my hard drive:

PERSONAL WRITING (into which I file all the writing I do --short stories, parts of novels, poems–that I would do for pleasure if it weren’t a part of my job.)

PERSONAL NON-WRITING (into which I put all the files that I need for my personal life, apart from my job: recipes, letters to friends, a guide to my videotape collection, etc.)

PROFESSIONAL WRITING (into which I file all the writing I need for my job)

PROFESSIONAL NON-WRITING (into which I put all the documents from my job that are admisinsitrative in nature, or relate to other people’s writings, such as my students’ work, or syllabi for classes I teach, etc.)

Very little occurs that isn’t immediately sortable under one of these categories. Within each category, I have further hierarchies of folders.

Since I started using this system, I’ve bashed my forehead against the wall 93% less than I did before.

9

Photos are stored to one folder and sorted according to actor (if there are more than a couple of them), random women/men, fantasy, LJ icons and bases (which are then sorted into where I got them or if I created them), family/snapped with my camera, pr0n/sexy.

Music is another folder and sorted by CD (if applicable) and random songs are sorted into folders by first letter of the band/person.

My writings are sorted according to poems, short stories and role playing logs.

Any video clips are saved to one folder (not too many of those)

School work is saved in a folder of it’s own.

I sometimes rearrange the folders or rename them, but that’s essentially it. Whenever something is is downloaded to my computer, it gets sorted right away into the appropriate folder and I burn everything to disk every so often. I do have a few nearly duplicate CDR’s, but things are pretty easy to find.

10

I thought that I had a problem, at least until I ready AHunter3’s reply.

I think my biggest problem is that I DON’T take the time to sort stuff as soon as it comes in. It’s all just piled up so much that the project is just too overwelming to do anything about. I do it in small doses, but then there’s just sOOO much left. Sometimes I think about doing a complete reformat, and only backing up the data files which I created myself, but I always feel like I won’t miss something until after it is gone…and I often finding myself searching for files which I HAVEN’T opened in 3 years :dubious:

11

You assume that my files ARE organized…