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Ask HN: How do you organise your files and folders?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you organise your files and folders?

#151

Post by Nextgrid »

m463 wrote: post #125
jaquers wrote: post #84

Save files to my desktop. When it gets too messy, I throw everything in a folder called "Cleanup". Repeat. When it gets messy again, I rename the Cleanup folder to Cleanup_ , then throw that and everything else in a new folder called "Cleanup". I'm about 7 deep at the moment.

I was discussing browser tabs with others. I usually middle click a bunch of articles on HN, then go read all the tabs until there are none left. I close by browser often. But one of my friends, he keeps every tab forever. He always has everything at his fingertips, but a reboot or power loss is a crisis. So I discovered talking to other that MANY do that too. hundreds of tabs is not as uncommon as you would imagine.…

Almost a decade ago I used to do this too. When the current browser window got too messy and I wanted to clean up I would just drag the window on the second screen and start a new browser on the primary screen.

Browser updates and accidental reboots (this was Linux and I accidentally typed “reboot” on the local machine instead of the remote server) were fun.

Nowadays I just don’t bother. If something is truly valuable or needs to be addressed I will bookmark it otherwise I let it go.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organise your files and folders?

#152

Post by dwd »

For a while I have been using USB drives to store semi-current files. Currently a 128Gb Sandisk Cruzer as it's always plugged in and allows me to keep the MBAs 128Gb drive 1/3 empty.

To keep it sane I have everything stored in dmgs that once full either get archived or copied across to the next USB. (I started this process using a 16Gb)

I currently have:

Projects (32Gb for PDFs: proposals, briefs and other project specific docs and files)

Software (8Gb: 2/3 full)

Fonts (8Gb: 1/2 full of fonts, icons and svgs)

Docs (8Gb: mostly empty but for references, api docs, etc)

The free space is largely taken up with virtual machines that I copy across to the MBA HD when needed.

Backup is quick and easy as you backup the dmgs. Same for archiving as you name the dmg file with the date range.

I do have a few dmgs that are "stuff", but generally anything important goes straight from email, dropbox, etc to the drive. Everything that ends up in ~/Downloads is typically deleted.

The 2Tb primary backup drive though is a different story. When you hit files with 8.3 names you know you're in deep. It's about due to be replaced with a 4Tb.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organise your files and folders?

#153

Post by asdff »

dwd wrote: post #152

For a while I have been using USB drives to store semi-current files. Currently a 128Gb Sandisk Cruzer as it's always plugged in and allows me to keep the MBAs 128Gb drive 1/3 empty. To keep it sane I have everything stored in dmgs that once full either get archived or copied across to the next USB. (I started this process using a 16Gb) I currently have: Projects (32Gb for PDFs: proposals, briefs and other project sp…

I'd find a different solution if you can, apple usb ports shouldn't be relied on long term. I've had them fail on me before and it becomes more and more likely as the machine ages, and not a simple fix.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organise your files and folders?

#154

Post by asdff »

Projects get their own folder with a running plain text notes file that I can grep for timestamps or keywords. Sometimes these folders get a little messy, but not hard to find anything with grep and locate, ultimately.

I make heavy use of the desktop since its a gui after all. I have aliases to all my project folders, aliases for all notes and my todo lists. I also take a lot of screenshots and these are periodically dumped into a folder on the desktop. I start the day with an empty desktop, then open my todo and mail.

Pdfs and reference all go into zotero and topics get their own subcollection, including an unsorted 'to read' where I dump things. Pretty painless to grab stuff off the web with zotero connector and word processing integrations.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organise your files and folders?

#155

Post by sneak »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #63

Photos: In folders named "YYYY/MM.N Descriptive event title" like "2019/05.1 Birdwalk with Stephanie". This really helps me find things later. Technical library: Academic Topic/subtopic/ then pdf title Music: I use beets now, which imports and organizes everything Household: Accounts folder, Mortgage folder, Appliances folder with subfolders for each appliance containing manuals, photos, and maintenance info. Systems…

Recommend MM.0N, or better yet, YYYY/YYYY-MM-NN.

Zero padding months means they will sort properly, and not jan oct nov dec feb

Putting the year in the sub folder means they can be moved around/back/out (or zipped) without losing important metadata.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organise your files and folders?

#157

Post by frank2 »

I rename files and folders a lot. I.e., I fuss over the names I give files and directories a lot -- including directories containing downloaded software, so I was very discouraged recently on encountering software that breaks when you rename any of the directories above where the software is installed. (Specifically, if you rename any element of the path to node_modules, packages installed by npm break.)

To effect this renaming (and for general care of directories) I use Emacs's Dired mode except for directories containing image files, for which I use Mac's Finder because it is better at displaying images files. I resisted embracing Dired mode for many years, but stopped resisting immediately on discovering dired-hide-details-mode.

Although I have a directory of PDFs, I strive to keep as much reference material as possible as plain text. Most of this plain text was obtained by selecting all the text on a web page (with Command-A), copying it, then pasting it into a text editor, then manually removing the illegible passages. I sometimes wonder whether I spend too much time making such copies and keeping them organized on my computer.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organise your files and folders?

#158

Post by lioeters »

jaquers wrote: post #84

Save files to my desktop. When it gets too messy, I throw everything in a folder called "Cleanup". Repeat. When it gets messy again, I rename the Cleanup folder to Cleanup_ , then throw that and everything else in a new folder called "Cleanup". I'm about 7 deep at the moment.

Yup, I have a similar (non-)system with a folder called "bucket". It gets filled up, named to _bucket. I have a few years worth of buckets.

Occasionally I go through them and move relevant/valuable files into their respective category folders like "books". But, I try to do that while the bucket is fresh/small, since they are by nature a mess of information.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organise your files and folders?

#159

Post by lioeters »

errantspark wrote: post #61

I try to make sure every name is clever enough to make me hate myself but also appreciate my wit when I try to find it in the future. Versioning is achieved by banging on the keyboard when saving the file, it's easy to tell how recent something is by the length of the 'asdljkhaoi' appended to the filename. Every once in a while I throw everything into a folder called "backup" and start fresh. I believe they go 8 deep…

> Versioning is achieved by banging on the keyboard

Thank you for this, it's hilarious and yet oddly logical (use of entropy).

Re: Ask HN: How do you organise your files and folders?

#160

Post by toyg »

dwd wrote: post #147
jaquers wrote: post #84

Save files to my desktop. When it gets too messy, I throw everything in a folder called "Cleanup". Repeat. When it gets messy again, I rename the Cleanup folder to Cleanup_ , then throw that and everything else in a new folder called "Cleanup". I'm about 7 deep at the moment.

I think this speaks for most of us... https://xkcd.com/1360/

Sigh, I'm precluded from that - I've lost most of my old stuff to various HD failures and cdrom decay. I remember having a bunch of emails from my teenager years that became effectively unreadable when the proprietary client I used was abandoned (I realized too late). Sad times.
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