How do you organize the files on your computer(s)?
Im in the process of re-organizing all the files on my computers/drives and I’m not sure how to go about it. Mainly I guess its just where to put things. Personal files… work files… temporary files… works in progress. Where do they all go?
Where is all your junk? How do you keep track of it? … across multiple computers?
I run winXP and pretty much let it organize itself. Programs go in, programs… most of my stuff goes in the my documents folder. Temp things on the desktop till i get a place for em. I used to despise my docs, but seeing as winXP wants to open there all the time, thought I would take advantage of it. My main folder used to be called Shiggity…
In the my docs, there’s words and text, comedy, my music, web design… each of these further breaks down. Since I love music, the one thing I try to keep consistent is my mp3 collection - one song by an artist goes in my misc 2004 folder, while three or more songs get a folder named after the band. Then the songs are always named ‘band name - song name’. That’s the way all my thousands of mp3’s are, save a few that a friend gave me but doesn’t know naming conventions (ack I hate the whole ‘ben_kweller_-_my_album_song_200’ man how can people live like that?)
I mainly keep flash stuff in the mac-flash folder as it likes to open there.
I have everything placed in my My Documents folder. I have a text file called “stuff for me to do” that I update several times in a day with the work I need to do, work that I just finished, where important files are, etc. That helps me to stay organized.
For all of the site related work, for example, I have a folder called…site! Inside there I have subcategories for every major chunk of work that I do. For the most part, each folder contains 5 or 6 other folders, and I make it a point to create a lot of folders so that I can try to read my way to where a file would be 5 or 6 months from now.
Almost all of the folders have a small text file created in Notepad where I briefly summarize what it is that I have in this file.
As for the junk files, I store them all in a folder called Temp. I never really delete files, for I usually find that the file I deleted is what I would need 
:cyclops:
That’s a good idea. I’m gonna consider it.
I have a few main file folders with sub dirs under the root of C
IMAGES
FLASH
DT PUBLISHING
FUNNY S**T
WEBSITES
you dont want to see my setup sen :lol:
i formated month ago and already have a complete mess.
i keep all my web files in my InetPub, all my exp files in there as well. i have a tech folder with all my prog install files. my Docs folder is flooded with Kirupa junk :lol:
Under linux, I have a ~/Programming folder, in which go several different languages (for example, I have a ~/Programming/C folder and a ~/Programming/Python folder). Inside these, go the names of programs I have written, and loads of other random scripts as well. I also have a ~/Images folder, and a ~/Web folder (symlinked to /var/www/localhost/htdocs/, my local web documents)
Under windows, everything just gets dumped into My Documents.
I have programsin one, games in other but the stuff I make and all kinds fo experiments and things I wanna keep are all bunched up in one folder (which of course has subfolders) so I can easily back it up whenever I need to or whatever…
my system is schizophrenic…it’s basically archived in a repeated fashion according to my computing phases…i.e. last reformat…and pretty much is stored in years…as in all of 2000’s work is one spot, 2001 in one spot etc.
i got 1 folder that i call Private
it fits all the finished or long-time projects, junk .fla’s for later use, tests, scripts and all the stuff you need (i this gets ba(d)leted (thx homestarrunner love that one) i will be ruined) that i created in the past 6 years.
then i got a folder on my C: drive, with all the current short-time projects. wich are being moved to Private when they are done…
then ofcourse, i got my desktop, here will all the junk .fla’s be created, its like: “Hey, cool effect, lets try that out”… and t will be stored on my desk, if its really that good is i expected, it will be transfered to the .fla folder in private.
it has a system… somewhere, but it gets messy after 6 years
Everything Ive made or created goes in My Docs. Then in seprate folders within My Docs, I have “Word Documents”, “Website files”, “flash development”, “misc” tsk tsk.
Hmm looks like throwing junk in content-related folders in my documents seems to be the way to go. Now its just a matter of organizing everything :hangover:
I think I need to get another firewire drive and just dump everything on that 
Being a designer on many projects I’ve found a pretty decent way to organize files from previous clients and such. Basically I have two drives: Progos (programs & OS) and Dataton (data obviously).
On my dataton drive I’ve got a ‘_Current Projects’ folder in which contains any client work I’m currently doing. The underscore makes it reside on the top level in a heirachy. From within that folder it breaks down into clients: Motorola, HP, Jim Beam, etc. Once I finish a project form '_Current Projects it gets moved into my GFX folder for basically archive purposes. Under the GFX it again breaks down into client names and individual projects from there. I also like to keep a quick-link shortcut to my ‘_Current Projects’ folder on my taskbar for quickly getting to stuff. Its also handy to make a new Toolbar on my taskbar that links directly to My Computer so I can launch any drive or My Docs, Pics etc folders from.
Also on the drive is a Downloads folder (broken into file types…apps, utilities, drivers, etc). Also are folders for design-app specific stuff. Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash. And of course inspiration folders and the extra stuff. Works great for me and i feel pretty organized.
oh, forgot to mention I also have a downloads and drivers folder. That way I can get right to anything I need, exe downloads and apps, to reinstall. My uncle recommended it and it was one of the best things I could ever do. I jsut wish I was better at naming files, sometimes files are not version named and I forget to do so.
I keep everything thing in 3 main folders wwwroot (of course), gallery (independat works), and mydocuments(junk and other stuff). My Docs has sub folders like fonts, apps… Basically junk stuff. I have a sharepoint on my network that I drop back ups into. And I have a share setup on my laptop that mirrors my wwwroot so when I work on the road or show stuff to clients.
One big thing I do now is organize my start menu. Make folders for like graphics programs, 3d…One time my start menu **** near took up my whole screen
That is one thing I struggle with is backups. I tend to save a new version of a file probably 30% of the time that I save a file at all. Then I get all these backup files and they get all over the place because I work on the file across 3 different computers and versions here and versions there and I rarely know which is which and when it comes time for collection, Im screwed.
I think the working between a few computers (non-networked) makes it hardest for me. Between my laptop, my desktop (who’ve never personally met, though they share a mutual friend the pen drive) and my work computer I have copies of the same thing in somewhat similar folder structures (though I tend to randomly reorganize now and then on any one machine without doing so on any of the others) but all with different versions of the same files. Some how I just need to keep track of them all. There’s gotta be some software or something out there that can do that. I’ll have to look into it.
Oh, and I keep my startmenu tight too 
Everything is within 1 submenu’s reach (except control panel selections which cant be helped and games which distract from work - keep them as far away as possible ;)) So nothing is actually in programs, its in the root menu of the startmenu - either icons or folders there containing icons 
I put all my .dll’s in one folder, and all my .exe’s in another folder and so on and so forth
Actually I keep all of my web/programming stuff in a partitioned D:\ drive, and all of my Pictures and Music on an external hard drive, and my documents are sorted into school folders or whatever they are for, some on my desktop, but most in My Documents.
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