Do you keep everything in “downloads” or have file trees 100 folders deep?

  • pancake@lemmygrad.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month ago

    File trees 100 folders deep lol. I keep all stuff synced across my machines, no actual backup though…

  • averyminya@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month ago

    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

  • j4k3@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month ago

    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

    • "Bike-
    • MTB/RDR/TRI/HYB/KID-
    • XS/SM/MD/LG/XL
    • (Brand)-
    • (Model)-
    • (Year)"

    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.

  • thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month ago

    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.

  • jiberish@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month ago

    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.

  • potentiallynotfelix@lemmy.fish
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month ago

    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.

  • Random Dent@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month ago

    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.

  • fool@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month ago

    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

    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      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!!

  • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month ago

    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.

  • AusatKeyboardPremi@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month ago

    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.

    Sidebar on GMS directory

    GMS originally stood for Games, Music, Software. But I stopped managing my own music since switching to Spotify and now Apple Music. I rarely watched movies on my computer back in 00s; my cable TV fulfilled those needs then.

    I used to manage the contents of GMS few times a year, but I have stopped doing that now since my usage of this folder has dropped by a lot since the early 2010s.

    The decreased use might be explained by my increased use of package managers, Steam and GOG, and streaming services.

    However, another factor could be that I now avoid situations where I would need to download anything via my browser, unless absolutely necessary. Perhaps due to lower tolerance towards such practices or reduced patience with age.

  • chobeat@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month ago

    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.

    • Crotaro@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 month ago

      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