How do you organize your files?

[GenericCitizen-X2017]

Hello,
how do you organize your personal files? (not work related)

Personally I do not have a system, utter chaos.

[admin]

In folders.

In my experience half of the people don't even know what foldes are, so this is a hot tip!

[GenericCitizen-X2017]

In my experience half of the people don't even know what foldes are, so this is a hot tip!

really?


Folders are my problem, I use to much of them, deeply nested structures, e.g. more than one Picture folder, some Picture folders are nested in other folders... + different drives with archives where the structure is different

For work related stuff I have an easy system, I sort everything under Projects and year of Project + one Reference folder for everything which is used in more than one project and used as reference e.g. a glossary

This is my tree:
Projects \
2015 \
Project A
Project B
2016 \
Project AA
Project BB
Project CC
Current \
"Shortcut to current project AA"
"Shortcut to current project 2"
"Shortcut to other folder I am working on"
Reference \
Files

The problem: personal files aren't really projects... documents, finance stuff, pictures, movies

[kunkel321]

Folders are my problem, I use to much of them, deeply nested structures, e.g. more than one Picture folder, some Picture folders are nested in other folders... + different drives with archives where the structure is different

Same problem here. I get duplicate files and duplicate locations. Often, when I really need to find something I just use Ctrl+F in XY...

[bdeshi]

I just drag frequent destinations onto the Catalog. You can add categories for different projects there too.

[GenericCitizen-X2017]

I have the feeling, that I need to start over with my personal files...

I use computers since childhood, some of the folders and files are 17 years old -> my first GW Basic scripts & WIN 95/98 Wordpad .rtf notes ;-).

As a child I didnt think about it, i just dumped everything in some folders. New computer? Just copy everything from Desktop into Folder "old computer" .
See: https://xkcd.com/1360/

I think the best method is to
1. create a new empty hiearchy,
2. consolidate all drives, which are not backups to one directory named "Archive-to-be-sorted"
3. use Branch View on this folder to flatten the deeply nested structure, and move the files "on access" to the new hierarchy.

The Question is what kind of hierarchy is best? mhh

Code: Select all

root \
 Doks \
  Finance \
   Bank1
   Bank2 \
    2015
    2016
  Uni \
   2016
  Reference
  Other Doks?
 Videos
 Movies
 Pictures Personal
 Pictures 

or maybe sorted by year first?

Code: Select all

root \
 2015 
 2016 \
  Doks
  Pictures
  Uni
 2017 \
  Pictures Personal Future Me
  Finance \
   Bank1

sorting by year first (like with work related files) seems cleaner, because old files don't clutter the list view and they are easily archivable. And there is no need to move them around after a year (easy incremental backup)

The good thing with the one big dump folder ("Archive-to-be-sorted") is, after a few months / years you will exactly know which files aren't relevant any more.

[Marco]

For a folder hierarchy system to work well, the folder should not "overlap", meaning that they should be clearly distinguishable. Ie. "Photos" and "Videos" and "Audio", because a (media) file can be either a photo or a video or an audio recording, but not both at the same time, for example.
XY gives you a powerful tagging system, and will give you a Live Filter by the end of this year, and in my case I've almost ditched the folder and subfolder paradigm. I have few top-level non-overlapping directories with few subfolders, and then I throw files in them, with a meaningful name. In case of name collision I append a "#md5_hash" suffix. I tag the files if necessary, and I'm good to go.
Yes, there's no "common" order, but finding something is as easy as a CTRL+F and typing the desired name.

[Acecool]

The reason I don't use any of the "My *" folders, now lacking "My " prefix in newer versions of Windows is because so many software developers thing it is a good idea to store non-human readable files in these locations such as save-games for games, and all sorts of other garbage ( which is what %AppData% is for; the "My *" folders were meant for actual human-readable content / work )...

Right now I use a separate hard-drive for my work, code, etc... I'm in the process of re-organizing because I have 25 years or so worth of data in backup folder after backup folder...


In terms of project folders, it depends.. For those I have a good format...