How do you organize your digital stuff?
How do you organize your digital stuff?
Do you keep everything in "downloads" or have file trees 100 folders deep?
How do you organize your digital stuff?
Do you keep everything in "downloads" or have file trees 100 folders deep?
100% of everything is on the desktop. No borders no boundaries to divide the working class programs against themselves
Before even looking, I could tell you were from .ml. Stand strong, comrade!
I used to have complete anarchy in my Downloads folder, but I've since reformed my ways and now my Downloads folder is clean and my Videos and Documents folders are complete anarchy instead.
It goes to the Desktop, when the Desktop is full I delete everything that looks unimportant 👍
thanks, I hate it
this is me, but i make another new folder and put everything in the new folder cause i don't feel like looking to see if it could be important, i'll do it later maybe
It's a good way to do it.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Your question made me curious, so I counted: the subdirectories in my home directory reach a maximum of 26 levels deep.
You gotta up those numbers!
Organizing is one thing but it's better to reduce your brainpower-spending regardless of what you do.
On Windows? Custom iconed folders and explorer bookmarks go a long way. Better than relying on Quick Access or whatever.
On desktop Linux? Tools like fd
and zoxide
(z
) save you as long as your directory names are consistent. Sticking to names-like-this
reduces guesswork and you can skip around in seconds. (Saved me many a due date.)
On Android, consult Indiana Jones. Your files are a treasure -- they're staying hidden
Android at least has this neat app named TagSpaces... but yeah I really hate how the entire filesystem is basically Windows' "Documents" folder: Various apps just dump things wherever the heck they please!
Edit: Thanks for mentioning those really cool Linux tools!!
I use this thing, I find it pretty useful
Ideally:
Reality:
This is the one that hit home for me.
NAS. Most things sit in downloads indefinitely, and I'll randomly decide the folder is gross and unmanageable and put things into appropriate folders. Usually Documents gets the most sub-categories, with various significant life docs sorted by category and year. Pictures gets random art I made in a folder, pictures, memes and funny shit, etc also get their own folders.
Media downloads go straight to the NAS where they're organized by Format/Category/Series/Name. As in Video/Movies/John wick/John wick 1. TV gets a season level in there.
2tb external hard drive, and another 2tb drive that has a copy of everything.
If it's important, or if you love your stuff, then always keep a backup.
I personally do three 5TB ext. drives, and only two drives may be at the same location at any given time. I'm also making sure only to use drives whose S.M.A.R.T. can be read without removing their enclosure.
Not sure who thought it'd be a good idea to make an external drive where S.M.A.R.T. cannot be read through whatever interface it uses.
I'm also making sure only to use drives whose S.M.A.R.T. can be read without removing their enclosure.
That's a good call, which drives have you found that support this?
My PC has a secondary HDD that has my files. Movies, books, comics, TV shows, random stuff, etc. It's more or less organized in their own folders.
These days, a shallow folder system. I have an electronica folder, and a Blanck Mass folder that definitely would go in there but that is full enough to stand on it's own. Actual taxonomic organisation would take way too many clicks, but flat organisation can result in trouble finding things, and just looks like you're a slob. (Although I'm guilty of having unsorted hoarder folders for things I only needed once, too)
There's probably a rule of thumb for optimal fanout on each GUI folder, related to our visual processing. Hmm. I wonder if there's a way to make the tree self-balancing as well.
I’ve struggled with digital organizing for decades. I tried tons of strategies from other people. There’s lots of good ideas, but ultimately you have to find something that works for you. I take some ideas from other systems and tweak them in ways that make sense for me.
I heavily rely on the default indexing of my OS. KDE is great, but most OSes have pretty good file searching tools. Just make sure to label files or at least folders in ways that are searchable.
Backups are super important (3 copies, 2 different types of media, 1 copy off site). I like to structure my data in a way that is easy to back up. I have a folder called “ephemeral” for stuff that I don’t care to back up so I don’t waste precious space. But i also try to have way more space than i need. I have a 4TB ssd on my main laptop and am planning on upgrading to 8TB soon. I have two different ZFS RAID3 arrays on my server where I copy data too. I started using syncthing to keep different types of media backed up between multiple computers. That way I can decide which computer is connected to which data set. Then I take regular backups of the sever to external drives and rotate those backup off site monthly.
I like to have a folder called “archive” where i put things that I want to hold on to, but will probably never need regular access too.
I also have a sensitive data folder for things that need to be on encrypted drives like financial statements, social security, passwords, ssh keys. Keeping it together helps me from forgetting it on an unencrypted drive. I had a laptop stolen once and it sucked not knowing what they may have pulled from it.
I have a media folder that contains folders for basic file types like documents, pictures, books, music, etc. The ephemeral folder has the same folder structure, but contains files that i don’t care if they disappear or get deleted. It is annoying to keep up with this though. But investing in storage space buys me time to not deal with it.
It will never be perfect so I learned how to stop worrying and love the search.
I don't keep anything relevant on my machine. It's just a way to access data hosted somewhere more safe. Also files and folders are terrible ways to organize anything, even remotely like Google Drive or similar stuff. It's Microsoft's and Apple's brainrot outliving the 90s. We should move forward.
If not in folders, how would you suggest we organize data on computers so that it's easily findable without needing keyword searches all the time? Because I can guarantee that I'm not the only one who would remember the keyword for a specific song or government document right until the moment when I need it and then I will forget what any of the set keywords/tgs were or be so vague with the tags that it feels like searching for something specific on pinterest
Organize?
I try but don't always succeed. In my main laptop, I have all misc files in the downloads folder, photos in photos, documents(pdfs, writer, math) and videos/movies in videos.
on my main desktop it's total anarchy
Downloads folder is a free-for-all; things get properly sorted when they’re moved onto the NAS - there is a seperate network drive for Multimedia (videos), Applications, Photos, etc. Each of those are then usually nested by Alphabetical folder.
It’s a MESS right now.
My main computer has two partitions: Windows 10 LTSB and Windows 10 premium. I have to use Premium now due to NVidia’s drivers not working on LTSB for like… years. So I boot into my secondary, smaller partition. But I’m still installing games to my first partition. Also there’s some left over games from my LTSB install. I want to install LTSC IoT for longer support, but I’m lazy and all it does right now is play games.
So everything used to go to my 1TB HDD, but then I bought a second 4TB HDD, so now things go to that. And I back stuff up to my like, five 1-4GB external hard drives. Also there’s a Pi running OMV in the living room with a 5GH external, for media. That one’s kinda messed up right now, things are glitchy when I stream from it, so I need to reinstall everything.
Then my partner’s computer has a couple terabytes of SSD space and a single 4TB HDD. Much easier. P
I have an organised Documents folder, Pictures folder, Videos folder etc synced between my devices with Syncthing. Downloads is just for temporary things I download from the web, but I never delete anything from there, so it just builds up. I keep a backup on an external 2TB SSD
Well whenever I want to keep track of an important document, I put AAA or 000 in front of the title. And then I make several copies. And then I make multiple folders intending to organize things. And then I wind up with 30 separate docs folders yet all my documents end up in the general My Documents, Downloads, or Desktop folders instead.
At this point, with the sheer amount of data, I've structured things based on individual drives. All of my devices have the onboard SSD - I go for 1TB minimum. Call me old fashioned, but I still partition that one in two, one containing the Windows stuff and the essential 3rd party software, and a second partition which contains games, downloaded media, miscellaneous software, generally the stuff I use more frequently, but isn't vital. It's also where I store all downloads to keep the Windows partition clean and separate.
As for my external drives, I have one which I keep stuffed with game installs (2TB), and a second one which serves as my media library drive - music, movies, etc (1TB).
In terms of folder structures, I either use the default ones which come with Steam, for instance, or I keep it as simple as humanly possible (eg. Music > Artist > Album). Downloads are lumped in a single folder, wherein I may make subfolders for mass downloads of mods and such. Otherwise, Search & pray! With indexing turned off, because I like to hurt myself!
Edited to add sizes and: bought a second 2TB external which I plan on using as a back-up for my music library, some DRM-free games, and whatever movies may strike me as worth preserving.
I've gone super organized to absolute dumped folders over the last decade. If you have a NAS, get organized. Everything on your computer, do more loosely.
My rule with hobbies like electronics like PCB design prototyping and breadboarding, 3d printing, roadie bicycle stuff, etc., is that my collection of crap and organization scheme has failed when I forget what I have or can't find it when I need it. I avoid the rabbit hole of making organization a priority project or taking it too far by only targeting what I need to do in order to prevent these situations of missing items.
The same goes for digital storage. My organization must be intuitive so that a year or more from now, I know where to find the thing at a glance.
One trick I learned from managing multiple connected point of sale systems for a chain of retail stores is to name your files in a way that sorts naturally. For instance, use year-month-day in file naming as opposed to nonsensical date standards. With bikes in the bike shops it was
Without a sales staff performing any searches I wanted bike types and sizes to naturally sort. I needed them to see exactly what was in stock in their store without thinking about the computer. I wanted them to immediately identify the range of choices available so that they could easily tell the customer what choices they have for immediate gratification. This involved me normalizing bike sizing to fit within my naming constraints as no bikes are sized the same way across brands. This is still how I think about naming schemes, they should always have sorting functionality built in. But don't take it so far that you can't remember the way you organized stuff without refamiliarizing yourself with the details.
I use plex so it files have to complay with the minimum plex naming conventions:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-tv-show-files/
File trees 100 folders deep lol. I keep all stuff synced across my machines, no actual backup though...
I have multiple folders of the form "desktop crap MM-DD-YY"
I wonder how common it is to make folders named “desktop crap” as I have several and some are over 20 years old
I just use Everything desktop search and let the files fall where they may.
File trees 100 folders deep but entirely in Downloads of course
Yes.
More the latter, I organise mostly by type (movies, series, music, podcasts, comics, books, photos, images etc) and use (workfiles, documents, resources, tutorials etc). There's was a whole subreddit about this, datacurator, not sure if something similar exists on Lemmy.
https://github.com/roboyoshi/datacurator-filetree
Basically doing a variant / slim version for my needs
I would advise against using dates in file/folder names for almost anything except for maybe photos and documents. Always pair with searchable keywords. Will you remember when exactly you downloaded that random picture when you wanna find it a few years later? Have fun looking through a hundred /year/month/day folders.
Depends on what it is. Currently, on my laptop, I have music organized by group followed by album if I have ripped a CD for backup in case my CD stops working. Got a lot of blanks, just in case, for free.
Downloads isn't organized. Pictures are slightly organized, with images for background in a folder and a few other folders. Most everything in documents is in a folder inside the documents folder or a subfolder in the subfolders.
Desktop has folder has mostly the important things in it, like folder for appimages, emulators, other programs and related files that require their own folder, and a few miscellaneous files. Organization is something I have prioritized a lot more on my laptop to ensure I don't end up having a situation like with my desktop where it's a shitshow.
As for phone, I'm doing a lot better with organization because I set up a new phone I got maybe a month or less ago and have been doing good to organize. Just need to go into my SD card and fix some things up that haven't been organized for a long time, since my 2nd smartphone, back from ~2015-16. Mostly just music. Got over 500 audio files stored on an SD card, so you can imagine how insane it is to try and organize, especially if you feel daunted by that task like me.
My organising system has a dual nature: it is either highly structured or a mess.
Information, such as documents, notes, spreadsheets, and images, is carefully organised into well-defined directories, no more than four or five levels deep. The destination directory is chosen at the time of download.
Anything that I expect to use more than once, even if only a few times, is dumped into a directory called GMS (Games, Movies, Software), which resides on a separate disk partition.
Everything else ends up in the Downloads directory, which is truncated every three months.
or have file trees 100 folders deep?
I'm felling personally attacked.
Either that or folders that are too big to load.
When you are a Digital Hoarder like me, is both.
I have mine set up in groups, per hard drive.
Documents is set up for projects. Downloads gets grouped every few months and turned into a backup downloads folder on the backup hard drive.
So it goes from C:/Downloads into H:/Backups/Downloads/Downloads-11-19-2024
Every other hard drive is mostly just games, so it's set up by project and the Games with whichever launcher.
I don't have many projects that go more than 6 folders deep, most would be 4 at most
I sort things every once in a while but eventually lose interest or patience. Would be nice to have a way to do it automatically. I suppose llms could help there, but I'm not sure if they're quite there yet in terms of reliability.
And more importantly, how do you back up your important stuff?
Anything more than 5 dir deep is overly complex.
All movies are thrown into one folder called movies, every show is in its own folder with a season per folder. Jellyfin deals with that.
Music is stored by artist and thrown into the music folder.
Documents are sorted by year and purpose but are all in one folder called documents.
Books are in e-books, audiobooks are in audiobooks folders by author.
Omg now they're trying to profile where you keep your shit so their hackers can find your porn stash more efficiently. Don't tell them Pike!
everything randomly distributed between ~/dl
and ~/tmp
(i dont even remember why i have both), and then i use lr
to find stuff (alias lr='ls -lrth'
). or find
.
D: Downloads
Then the folders -
Films
TV programs
Software