Photoprism for photos.
Plex for music, movies, and series.
Invoices I file physically.
For messaging I plan to move to Matrix such that my homeserver runs "bridges" for other platforms so that I can later on export and query messages. For emails I use notmuch.
Ask HN: What is your approach for managing personal digital assets?
11–20 of 27 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is your approach for managing personal digital assets?
#12For managing (storing) files I've concluded that it is impossible to find the ideal hierarchical structure for containing everything, so just go for reasonable structures that might have redundancy - for instance, accepting macos photos' way of organizing photos, adding in another directory for photos not managed by the photos app, plus photos that I include in my journal which is yet another set of directories.
For finding things, I've found it impossible to give sufficiently unique names to everything, and just go for names that are somewhat descriptive. If there is a way to annotate them with descriptions, I try to make the descriptions as complete as possible, am diligent with proper spelling and try to use canonical forms in my descriptions. I also try to settle on a standard set of words I use instead of their synonyms. This allows me to use standard searching mechanisms to find things without worrying about whether I am searching for the right word. I can with confidence to a system-wide search without worrying whether I'm searching using the right words: because I know which word from a set of synonyms to use, because I don't have to worry about finding misspelled variants, and because I know which order I will have put the words in
Re: Ask HN: What is your approach for managing personal digital assets?
#13This is what I use (primarily using self-hosted, open-source solutions where possible).
For documents like invoices, correspondence, etc, I scan them into paperless-ngx.[0] You can apparently set it up to monitor an email inbox and automatically store certain emails or attachments using rules, but I just take the old fashioned approach of adding scanning them in and saving them manually.
I backup all photos to a Nextcloud[1] instance. Periodically, I will go through all my recent photos and organise them. Travel-related photos go in trip-specific directory ("Travel -> [year] -> [trip name]"). Everything else just goes in a "Photos -> [year] -> [month]" directory. Unfortunately this won't help you find the photo of you wearing a cap unless you know where or when it was taken. I believe there are some AI-based solutions out there but I haven't tried them.
For contact details, I store these centrally on Nextcloud using its Contacts app[2] (which uses vCard and CardDAV). I can then access it using any standard contact book software (I use the CardBook addon[3] for Thunderbird and Fossify Contacts[4] on Android).
Similar for calendar - host it via Nextcloud (using CalDAV)[5] and access it from my preferred calendar software.
Joplin[6] for notes (again synced via Nextcloud).
The process is kind of half-automated, half-manual. I don't think there is a good solution to fully automate any of this stuff, particularly in the FOSS space. If you keep on top of organisation it's not that painful and doing things like organising photos and adding upcoming events to your calendar can be fun.
Nextcloud is really good at acting as a hub for your data and speaking to a variety of clients using traditional, open protocols like CalDAV and CardDAV.
0: https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/
2: https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/contacts
3: https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-GB/thunderbird/addon/cardb...
4: https://f-droid.org/packages/org.fossify.contacts/
Re: Ask HN: What is your approach for managing personal digital assets?
#14I try to maintain a structure for important stuff (documents, photos, decades of emails, etc.) that can be copied or backed up as needed.
If I find a need to create an order out of chaos (e.g., for thousands of the electronic books I have) I find it best to sketch up a top-level directory view of how I want it; then switching to this method and occasionally cleaning up one-off additions is not hard. My 2c.
Re: Ask HN: What is your approach for managing personal digital assets?
#15I master all files on the home nas. No more files on a local laptop. Everything, including photos. Photos moved off of phone and stored on nas. Plex has access, and Home Assistant displays random family photos every couple of minutes.
Nas is replicated offsite via tunnel to another home. Occasional backup to a usb drive kept in a safe. No third party cloud.
Made the switch to Obsidian a couple of years ago for notes. A big step up in searchability. Combined with syncthing to replicate the vault on mobile phone.
Re: Ask HN: What is your approach for managing personal digital assets?
#16My approach is a flat date-based file structure with a markdown-based Zettelkasten on top:
File are mostly in a flat structure. In ~/, I have directories like documents, photos, videos that directly contain all the files. For certain topic, I create separate directories (e.g., PhD, major projects). The filenames always start with an ISO date (yyyy-mm-dd). For documents, it could be like 2024-03-24_inv_google.pdf. Here, inv means it's an invoice and Google is the organization where the invoice comes from. After the date, there's always a three letter code that tells me the type of document. All physical documents are scanned and OCRed and put in the same structure.
On top of that I curate a Zettelkasten. It's just a directory with a set of markdown files (also a flat hierarchy). This Zettelkasten is layer of information on top of the remaining filesystem. The markdown files link to external resources (e.g., on the web) and also to internal files (e.g., (something)[../docuemnts/something.pdf]). This way I can browse my personal information like it's the web.
This file structure is my single source of truth. I try to export all other information as text files there (e.g., emails, contacts). I'm using restic to backup my entire home folder. I don't use any sophisticated tools, just a basic PDF reader, vim, Gimp, and other standard tools of the Linux ecosystem. I used to sync my home directory using unison but currently, I'm just using a single one.
Re: Ask HN: What is your approach for managing personal digital assets?
#17Not your drive, not your data.
For working storage, I use a local server with a Raid 1 array. The drive manufacture dates are offset by a year or more. I keep a spare drive on hand in case of failure.
Every 6 months or so I do a full backup to an external, portable Raid 1 array (again offset manufacture dates) that I keep at grandma's house.
For routine backup, I have a pair of microSD cards that I update every Friday. These are encrypted with Bitlocker in case they should ever be lost. These cards tend to fail over time, hence the 2 copies. I plug them in simultaneously (USB) into the server and run a batch file to update both. Any failure generally becomes obvious at this point. Bitlocker helps as a failure detection mechanism. Any corruption usually results in an unmountable drive.
One microSD goes into a fire proof safe. The other gets strapped to my wrist so I *always* carry it with me wherever I go (even the shower) so it is as safe as I am, if not safer.
The theory being that all I really need to worry about is my personal safety. But even if I should die in some horrible accident like a car or plane crash, authorities will expend a great deal of effort to recover my body --- and the attached microSD storage.
For this purpose, I have designed a 3D printed, discrete, secure locking microSD card holder that slips over a watch strap with the holder on the the inside against my wrist for protection. No one ever even notices it except me.
Re: Ask HN: What is your approach for managing personal digital assets?
#18Has anyone done a (hopefully) systematic survey of the processes and software people use to store their stuff, sort of like a usesthis.com but just for storing assets, and how well that's worked over time? My guess is the successful strategies would look a lot like Brajeshwar's comment, a thoughtful plan that uses simple software and formats, some planning for the future, and, probably critically, regularly doing "digital chores".
There've been some efforts in the past to store everything and make it searchable, like the ancient Chandler project, and the possibly still alive Parkeep, none that have been more widely adopted than a strategy of put everything in Gmail, Dropbox, etc, and hope for the best, which is what I do, minus the regular diligence that people like Brajeshwar have.
Making and using anything more complex looks like it turns into a (very cool looking!) hobby in itself, like these:
https://thesephist.com/posts/monocle/
https://simonwillison.net/2020/Nov/14/personal-data-warehous...
https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-prod...
And yeah, the latter two also include storing and searching more than say email and photos, but maybe shows one's tendency to want to store and search everything.
Re: Ask HN: What is your approach for managing personal digital assets?
#19I've long pondered on the idea of a unified, indexed database of all my personal data, which can also be stored on multiple removable drives (not your storage, not your data).
I've started work multiple times, but the scale of work required just scares me away.
Ideally, I'd like to see a timeline of everything that happened in my digital life - from photos, messages, health data, e-mails, even web sites I've visited.
For documents and files it should offer full text search and semantic search, etc.
The reason I want to have all my data in one index is not just for backup. As AI keeps evolving, I'll be able to use this data to train ever more capable AIs, which could eventually know pretty much everything about me and be able to sound like myself or even emulate me :).
Looking far into the future, this thing could eventually outlive me ...
Re: Ask HN: What is your approach for managing personal digital assets?
#20My approach is a flat date-based file structure with a markdown-based Zettelkasten on top: File are mostly in a flat structure. In ~/, I have directories like documents, photos, videos that directly contain all the files. For certain topic, I create separate directories (e.g., PhD, major projects). The filenames always start with an ISO date (yyyy-mm-dd). For documents, it could be like 2024-03-24_inv_google.pdf. Her…
What do you use for scanning and OCRing? I haven't found a solution that _doesn't_ make me want to throw it all out and just retype the doc by hand.
I too am moving towards a flat hierarchy with dates after attempting Zettlekasten and PARA. I like your "Zettlekasten layer on top of the fs" idea. Def going to do something similar.