I am interested in knowing how you name, structure files and folders on your computer.
Ask HN: How you manage files on your computer?
1–10 of 14 posts
Re: Ask HN: How you manage files on your computer?
#2I'm pretty simple. I remember briefly experimenting with deep nested logical folder hierarchies in windows 98 when I was like 10 years old, no experiments became habits because I just didn't have that many files to store back then. NES roms and like 3 songs.
These days I have all my code in ~/code, a sub folder for each project. I've got apparently accumulated 120 project folders in the last 5 years. Anything else I make tends to be a loose file in ~/assets.
Whenever I get the urge to do some 3d modelling, I quickly check spotlight if I've started anything like it before. I get the urge to make a castle? cmd + space, type castle. Yup I last edited castleTown.blend in 2014. Then I just pick up where I left off.
My assets folder, being something I do to relax, has grown pretty ludicrous. It's distributed between a few devices, but i'd estimate I've got 2-5000 different made-from-scratch 3d models, digital paintings, textures, alpha maps, etc all over the place. Kinda wish I could have a garage sale from time to time :D
The only other kind of file accumulation goes in ~/Downloads, and I delete that wholesale every few weeks.
Thanks for making me reflect on my.. accretions..
Re: Ask HN: How you manage files on your computer?
#3%userprofile%/+workspace/projectName
%userprofile%/github.com
%userprofile%/Downloads - symlink to Desktop
../Desktop/+Archive - for old stuff
Everything older than 3 week gets moved automatically to +Archive to keep Desktop clean
%userprofile%/+workspace/ZimWiki/notes > with more tree structures
/work/jira/item.txt /work/releases/version.txt /work/deployment/sql /work/appraisal/20180208.txt /work/backup/sql /personal/events /win/backup /unix /web /edu /app/sql/data /app/data/sql /tec/sql/backup /journal/2018/02/21.txt /journal/2018/02/sqlBackup.txt ...
First create anything in a /Journal node on that /month, and later move to a more appropriate /node, after I understand where that is.
I can have multiple nodes to deal with same thing or similar. I can easily swap nodes parent with child.
Re: Ask HN: How you manage files on your computer?
#4I store most my files in ~/Documents. I have among other various folders a folder dedicated to code, to pdf books and to my school work as well as work. My code folder is separated by language and in each language folder I have a folder named bins which holds various one off experiments. Within each language folder I also have various long standing projects and such. My school work is separated by semester and then within those by course Identifier. My pdf books are separated by topic. Usually I tend to nest things in somewhat deep hierarchies. I can still quickly navigate by terminal because I use z.sh [1].
Re: Ask HN: How you manage files on your computer?
#5I've pretty much given up on trying to find an all-encompassing hierarchical organization for things, on the grounds that I kept needing to make things that could go in one of several places and it was hard to choose which was the 'right' one. Now I instead just try to adhere to several principles:
1. Everything I want to keep for a long time lives in my home directory, so I don't lose it in machine migrations and OS reinstalls, separated (as best as I am able) from big stuff I don't need to keep (like installer images and stuff I could download again), simply so if I have to back it up to a space-constrained device it is easy to fit without needing a weeding out first.
2. I use the simplest file format I can, so for example a text file instead of a word processor document, for longevity. I still have old documents in obsolete word processor formats as a painful reminder of the cost of breaking this rule.
3. I rely on search (like find or spotlight) to find things. Accordingly, I try to use standard terminology and make sure my spelling is correct. It sucks to try to find something I know I wrote a few years ago, fail, and later discover my search failed because I originally misspelled the term I was searching for, or used an esoteric synonym.
4. Probably the most structured thing I have is my journal, which is just text files. For instance, today's journal entry is in ~/Documents/Journal/2018/2018-02-21.txt. The first line is today's date in ISO-8601 format, which means I can concatenate multiple entries and still be able to know which day any given line refers to. I have some awk and grep scripts that help with this.
Other than all that, I have lots of snippets stored in Yojimbo, and academic papers organized in Papers (Mekentosj). I have the iPad partners to both programs, and content synced to the iPad, one way (so the desktop is the definitive copy) because I've learned to not trust two-way sync.
Re: Ask HN: How you manage files on your computer?
#6I keep unused but "maybe be useful one day" code in a directory name "museum".
Re: Ask HN: How you manage files on your computer?
#7I split files between day-to-day work and/or personal documents in the /home/user directory, and a very large partition dedicated to long-term storage which is subdivided again into various media subdirectories and/or other archived files. Long-term storage is made up of things which have to be kept, but are not written on a daily basis - so that includes stuff like media, computer program archives, archived backups, etc.
Daily backups apart from /home/user include enough information to restore the system within an hour or so in case of a system crash: so /etc/, /usr/local, list of installed packages, website, mysql databases.
The total personal storage in /home/user usually varies around 10 gigs which is backed up daily as a single unit.
The total long-term storage is currently around 3 terabytes, this also is backed-up daily (to 2 backup disks) but using rsync so that only actual daily changes are copied.
When stuff needs a date, the date is done in reverse order using only 6 digits: YYMMDD. This sorts automatically by date.
The archive partition is called /a. It has these subdirectories:
audio_music audio_other BAK BAK_MONTHLY calibre comp git info jvs_docs_monthly mail_archive medical photo print travel VDI video xs
Each of these are subdivided further - examples:
/a/audio_music/bands/pink_floyd-dark_side_of_the_moon/dark_side_of_the_moon_03_time.flac
/a/calibre/fiction_collection/Dillinger/Jack Higgins - Dillinger (1350)/Jack Higgins - Dillinger - Dillinger.mobi
/a/comp/manuals/programming/ucsd-pascal-ii.0-user-manual-reconstruct.pdf
/a/comp/os/linux/pkgs/virtualbox-5.0_5.0.26-108824-ubuntu-trusty_amd64.deb
/a/photo/canon_2003/img_1235.jpg
/a/print/magazines/byte/1988-vol_13/198803_byte_magazine_march_1988.pdf
/a/travel/france-2011/europe2011-docs/travel/dubai_xfers_and_accommodation-nov11.pdf
/a/VDI/Windows7Laptop/win7-50gb.vdi
/a/video/doco/war/barbarossa1-politics_of_fear.flv
/a/video/music/vocal_male/elton_john-greatest_hits/216_elton_john-written_in_the_stars_ft.leann_rimes.mp4
/a/xs/aseries/A050_nse_080513/nse-30/Disks/qd/games8
Re: Ask HN: How you manage files on your computer?
#8I track all my projects in ~/Documents/projects/[current|pending|completed]. Each project has its own folder and a summary file. As each project progresses, the projectName.txt file is updated and the folder receives other spreadsheets, text files, images, and copies of e-mails. Large projects that have subprojects have a "=" in front of their folder name so they're easily identified.
Re: Ask HN: How you manage files on your computer?
#9Most of my files are in ~/projects, in folders by project name. Projects are structured according to conventions of the tech Im using. Most of the time it's project/server, project/client, project/.
General advice is to try to keep it as "flat" as possible, deeply nested folders quickly become inconvenient.
I have an assets folder where I keep everything I may need organized by type - images, textures, references, screenshots, etc.
Then there's a temp folder for quick experiments and one-off scripts.
There's library folder where I keep my books, audiobooks, video courses(organized by subject).
And that's about it. Also there's a lot of the mess in Downloads folder, I let it remain unstructured, I just delete the most space-consuming files from time to time.
Re: Ask HN: How you manage files on your computer?
#10I'm pretty simple. I remember briefly experimenting with deep nested logical folder hierarchies in windows 98 when I was like 10 years old, no experiments became habits because I just didn't have that many files to store back then. NES roms and like 3 songs. These days I have all my code in ~/code, a sub folder for each project. I've got apparently accumulated 120 project folders in the last 5 years. Anything else I…
I have a CG folder, in it there are modeling, painting, rigging, animation, fx, etc folders, based on the type of project.
If I want to render a complete scene, I'll put it in "props" or a "set" folder. In it there are folders by software type - hou, silo, ps; and also some for generated files - geo, cache, render, render_comp, and out (for final render).
Also there's CG/assets where I put textures, references, houdini assets, etc.