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How do you like to organize your files?

T

Thetech

Senior member

Ok I admit it, all of my files are unorganized, I can't keep them organized and I have no clue as far as whats the best way to keep everything under control and ready for easy backups.
So.... That's why I'm here, How do most of you prefer to organize your files, and how do you keep everything clean and easily accessible. (I use Windows XP, I suppose that's relavent to this)

There I admitted it. Hi, my name is _____ and I'm unorganized.
 
I organize my files by application. I try to keep them independent from the OS on separate drives.
 
I definately keep my stuff organized. My computer is a well oiled machine. I'm a bit OCD, so it makes sense heh. I never use the search feature in Windows for anything, as I know where evertyhing already is. I'm on Vista now, so my "My Documents" folder is different than it used to be, but here's how it goes for me.

C: (35gb) for operating system and programs (anything but games)
-Program Files
-Program files (x86)
-Users (empty, all user info is on D drive)
-Windows


D: (430gb) for media, games, downloads, whatever
-Emulators and ROMs
-Games
-Matt
-WinRAR Cache


Now I'll explain D:.

Emulators and ROMs: Why don't I put them in the "Games" folder you ask? Because that folder is only for games that "install." Emulators and ROMs are just zips and executables, that have no registry settings. So they get their own folder.
-Emulators
---Emulators for the various systems, each in their own folder
-ROMs
---ROMs sorted in folders based on system

Games: Self-explanatory. Every game that I install, when it asks to install to C:/Program Files, I simply redirect it to here.

WinRAR Cache: Why did I make a folder for this you ask? Because if I didn't, and left it as whatever it defaults to on the C: drive, then whenever I extract a multi-gig ISO file it would have to extract and then "move" the file to my D: drive. Basically doubling the time it takes to get the file. Having the WinRAR temp directory on the same drive as the destination of the extracted file, eliminates the "move" step.

Matt My user folder where I put everything, carefully organized like so:
-Desktop (self-explanatory)
-Documents (PDF, text files, word docs, etc.)
-Downloads (This is where I keep things right after downloading them, before I sort them. Songs stay in here until I rename and re-tag them. Movies, apps, and whatever else doesn't really require much/any renaming, so they are usually moved out or deleted fairly quickly.)
-Music (Music sorted by genre folders, all with id3 tags and album art. Within each genre folder, I have a "Singles" folder for the singles of that genre, and aside from that I have folders for entire albums that fall within that genre)
-Pictures (Pics sorted in folders by date taken and brief description. Folders have names like this: 20080202 Anandtech. So the folders are sorted chronologically, and I can see the brief description as to what I took on those dates.)
-Videos (I don't have a whole lot of videos, but if they belong to a series, they get put in a folder by their name. If they are just random videos, they get put in a folder based on what kind of video they are. Funny, Games, etc.)




And that's my computer. =p
 
To further elaborate on my OCD renaming and re-tagging, that goes like this:

For pictures, the folder name is really all that I need to know, so the individual picture files are just the date, and a sequence number. Like 20080202-001.jpg. Or whatever

For music, I get a bit pickier. For singles, I simply have them named as "Artist - Title". When it comes to ID3 tags for singles, I only have Artist, Title, and Genre information. After all, if I don't own the rest of the album, I don't care to know what track number or album title that single has. No date, no album art, none of that extra stuff for singles. For songs that belong to full albums, however, I fill out. Track, Total tracks, Date, Genre, Album Art, etc. As for their actual file names, I name them "Track - Title." I don't need to have the artist name in the filename, because the artist's name is two folders up. The folder is album name, and the folder above that is the artist name.



It sounds like a lot of work, and believe me, it is lol. But I could probably find any file that I care about on my computer with my eyes closed. 🙂
 
Originally posted by: Andvari
To further elaborate on my OCD renaming and re-tagging, that goes like this:

For pictures, the folder name is really all that I need to know, so the individual picture files are just the date, and a sequence number. Like 20080202-001.jpg. Or whatever

For music, I get a bit pickier. For singles, I simply have them named as "Artist - Title". When it comes to ID3 tags for singles, I only have Artist, Title, and Genre information. After all, if I don't own the rest of the album, I don't care to know what track number or album title that single has. No date, no album art, none of that extra stuff for singles. For songs that belong to full albums, however, I fill out. Track, Total tracks, Date, Genre, Album Art, etc. As for their actual file names, I name them "Track - Title." I don't need to have the artist name in the filename, because the artist's name is two folders up. The folder is album name, and the folder above that is the artist name.



It sounds like a lot of work, and believe me, it is lol. But I could probably find any file that I care about on my computer with my eyes closed. 🙂
Click to expand...

Sounds like a plan, when you backup your stuff what medium and method do you use?
@Anyone else how do you prefer to organize your stuff.
 
Actually I've never backed up before. My collection of crap is getting large enough and I've put enough work into organizing it enough now that I am planning to backup soon. I've ordered an external eSATA/USB hard drive, and I assume I'll just drag and drop my "Matt" folder over to the external once a week/month or something.

*shrug* That sounds pretty simple. I'm clearly not a master of backups though, so don't take my word for it. =p
 
i don't. i use copernic desktop search. makes finding media/files instant.
it constantly indexs files, including mapped drives.

what i have changed is file naming, the more descriptive the better. i so hate files that aren't named anything more than05302.jpg or whatever people do on the web. unsearchable nonsense. desktop search makes organizing files manually not that important. tags also important.

Actually I've never backed up before. My collection of crap is getting large enough and I've put enough work into organizing it enough now that I am planning to backup soon. I've ordered an external eSATA/USB hard drive, and I assume I'll just drag and drop my "Matt" folder over to the external once a week/month or something.
Click to expand...

use cobian or syncback to do that automatically on schedule. and to do it without copying unchanged files over and over for no reason.🙂 set it up and forget it.


 
I use several partitions to organize my files. Music has its own partition and folders are by Artist, then Album. The Work partition is where I keep all my work related files, organized by project. The other partitions are for Games, Storage and Backup, and of course the OS has its own partition which is where all programs are installed as well. I also have a Movies partition but really don't store too many movies on my HDD; it's mostly for burning and converting.

Makes it easy to back up when you're organized.
 
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