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Ask HN: How do you organise your hard drive?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you organise your hard drive?

#11

Post by marak830 »

C: windows, often used software (fastest SSD) d: personal storage organised by type(folder), e: client files organised by client/project (future modifications get a new project folder), reference files have their own folder inside the client/project they are associated with.

More generic references go onto my personal drive.

I have it this way due to losing a ton of old work when I lost a hd, since then client files on their own drove that I backup online regularly. If I lose my personal/games drive it's no big deal to re download.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organise your hard drive?

#12

Post by bobbydreamer »

C: drive all temporary files like currently downloaded movies & music and default path files.If lost no worries.

D: Personal, Educational PDFs, Video tutorials and projects.

E: drive for videos, music and games data files.

D&E drives rsync with Google storage buckets. (GSUTIL)

Housekeeping - PDFs and Tutorial videos which I haven't referenced in 2years will be eventually deleted. On first identification I will rename the folder as CBD - Foldername(cbd - can be deleted). Next time when I am browsing files in explorer if a CBD catches my eye, I will delete it. I Regularly run dir /s and save output in TXT file for reference purposes, only one time I opened it. Decided not to rename any downloaded files as using the same name it can be found again by googling, if I rename it it's hard to find in internet. I also use a duplicate finder to find and delete duplicate files.

Project files are in google source repository and partially in GitHub & bitbucket as well.

For references links, Have a set of files named it on the subject like java.txt, git.txt, gcp.txt which contains all the commands and links which I had found useful and I am typing it regularly in marked down format itself, so it looks fancy in vscode. This reference is in D:\

Re: Ask HN: How do you organise your hard drive?

#13

Post by miguelrochefort »

cogs wrote: post #5
miguelrochefort wrote: post #3

My approach to file management is delegation: - Most files go straight to the default recommended location. This includes downloads, git repositories, programs, etc. - Source code is on GitHub. - Emails are on Gmail. - Notes and todos are on Google Keep. - Books are on Google Drive in PDF or EPUB format. - Photos and videos are on Google Photos and YouTube. - Music is on Spotify and YouTube. - Movies are on Netflix,…

I do like the idea that "Most files go straight to the default suggested path". Maybe the rest is a little Google-centric for me. Perhaps that's why I'm having trouble being organised; I haven't bought 100% into any ecosystem. Do you not keep source code locally? Or is it in two places?

> Do you not keep source code locally? Or is it in two places?

When I clone a git repository, it goes there by default:

  C:\Users\Me\source\repos\MyProject

Re: Ask HN: How do you organise your hard drive?

#14

Post by oldmancoyote »

cogs wrote: post #6
oldmancoyote wrote: post #4

I keep all my very current projects on the desktop along with temporary items and odd-balls I haven't classified. Everything else goes into folder called "A Reference System" which contains a folder for each letter of the alphabet.

Wow. But then the question is - what word does the letter represent: is it a topic, a project, the name of the tool ... ?

I play it by ear and just let my decision happen without worrying about. If I don't remember where it is, a system-wide search eventually leads me to it.

Just browsing through the alphabet is enjoyable as it brings up neat things I had forgotten about.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organise your hard drive?

#15

Post by haloux »

saghm wrote: post #9

I have a fairly specific system that I've developed, mostly due to my being fairly anal about not wanting to leave random files lying around after I'm done with them and wanting to keep as little as possible in my home directory. I tend to try to keep most things in my directory that's sync'd to cloud storage (previously Dropbox, now Nextcloud since Dropbox doesn't support non-ext4 on Linux); ~/Documents and ~/Pictur…

Which fs are you using nextcloud with? Is it as seamless as ext4 with Dropbox?

Re: Ask HN: How do you organise your hard drive?

#16

Post by oldmancoyote »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #10
oldmancoyote wrote: post #4

I keep all my very current projects on the desktop along with temporary items and odd-balls I haven't classified. Everything else goes into folder called "A Reference System" which contains a folder for each letter of the alphabet.

> Everything else goes into folder called "A Reference System" which contains a folder for each letter of the alphabet. Wouldn't it be easier to just keep the directory structure flat, and use software to jump between letters? For instance, on macOS I can just press the "C" key and Finder will jump to items that start with C.

I would feel skittish without a more formal structure.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organise your hard drive?

#18

Post by roryrjb »

I use the out of the box defaults on my Ubuntu desktop. Documents, Videos, Music, etc... with my code going into ~/Projects. I have random binaries and shell scripts I use in ~/.bin. I do like to keep a tidy and organised hard drive and have shell scripts for various related tasks to this. Also I have heavily used cloud storage in the past, but I don't like this now, as in I'm now uncomfortable with this. I recently got a 1TB SSD and with my previous hard drive upgrades in the past I have several HDD/SSD's lying around that I back up to regularly. I have a Makefile in $HOME to do this that calls some shell scripts that use rsync underneath.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organise your hard drive?

#19

Post by tluyben2 »

(Slightly offtopic as it doesn't answer the question)

Like more people here, I have really everything in the cloud, so my filesystem (encrypted linux ext4) is a complete mess. I have a github repository with scripts that, after entering my decryption password, will restore any linux/Mac/windows machine to the production machine I need within minutes. So I just format my drive when it gets annoying.

I get stressed about everything being in the cloud sometimes, but there is so much that I don't really know how I would back it up in an organized fashion. Still waiting for an affordable backup service that allows me to download 'the blob that is my life' from all top 25 services (gmail, google phones, drive, docs, ms office cloud, github, Dropbox etc). But I have not found something like that that actually works with the rancid volume I have and the trust I would need to provide such a service. Ofcourse business documents etc are backed up (legal requirement), but that is a really tiny % of everything I have.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organise your hard drive?

#20

Post by jen729w »

“...surely not Dewey Decimal?”

Close! Johnny.Decimal. https://johnnydecimal.com

I’m Johnny. Feedback much appreciated, I’m working like a busy little bee on the site as we speak. Should have a show HN app ready in a couple of months, but I’m learning JS/React as I go so it’s taking time. :-)

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