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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?

#141

Post by leetcrew »

laumars wrote: post #90
w1nt3rmu4e wrote: post #88

If you happen to be fishing for app ideas, here's one I'd pay $50 for: An app that controls `~/Downloads` and automatically organizes (somehow), tracks usage and schedules files for deletion. Once a week I'd like to see a dialog listing files likely to be unwanted, info about how many times they've been accessed, where they came from, etc. With a simple, one button, 'trash them all'. The idea would be to optimize set…

One of the biggest regressions in modern browsers is how they all automatically download to the Downloads folder. I really miss the dialogue you used to get where you’d get asked where you’d want to save the file (im aware you still get that if you right click and go “save as” but that’s not always possible with some sites).

maybe it's just because it works well with my downloading "workflow", but I find it a reasonable default.

most of the files I download are installers that will soon be out of date or blank forms that I need to fill out and return once. the rare important file will be quickly moved to a permanent location. everything else gets deleted once every month or so, and it's convenient for these ephemeral files to all be in one place.

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

#142

Post by Moyamo »

nohope wrote: post #140

Few people here have referred to the /tmp directory. This is essential in my workflow. I put a lot of things there (this is also my Downloads folder) and when the computer reboots, its clean again! One of the computers I use stay turned on for long times, so I have /tmp/t and a cronjob that cleans all files older than 1 day in this directory: # Remove all files in /tmp/t older than 1440 min (one day) */10 * * * * fin…

Using /tmp for my downloads folder became problematic for me when downloading big files.

1. You may want to pause the download and restart it after reboot.

2. It's quick to redownload small files but a pain to have to redownload large ones.

3. Arch puts /tmp on a tmpfs, so big files can eat all your memory!

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

#144

Post by Moyamo »

jen729w wrote: post #20

“...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. :-)

The problem I'd have with that is that I'd never be able to commit to a fixed set of areas or categories since the type of work I do is constantly evolving. Plus I've always had trouble creating mutually exclusive categories.

What works well for me is to keep all things I'll need soon in the top level of my documents folder and when I'm done with it I move it into an archive folder.

This way my documents folder has few files and folders in an easily accessible flat heirarchy. While old files can be easily searched for in the archive folder.

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

#146

Post by keraf »

amenghra wrote: post #30

- bunch of random files in ~/Desktop/ - more random files in ~/Desktop/old/ - more more random files in ~/Desktop/old/old/... - real stuff in ~/dev and ~/Site/ - a mix of important and unimportant files in ~/Downloads/

Doing exactly this but from time to time I move my old desktop folders in a backup folder with a date. But now I have so many in there with duplicate files. I'm sure I'd win a lot of disk space by merging/deduping those folders.

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

#147

Post by valeyard »

* ~/Projects/ - all my git repos

* ~/.bin - only scripts, so this dir is in my $PATH

* ~/Pictures - only images, my rices, wallpapers, screenshots, etc

* ~/syncthing - files I sync with syncthing (my .kbdx and my memes folder)

* ~/Documents/ - my university stuff, a courses folder (files I created doing some courses), some cheatsheets in .md, a library folder where I keep all material I have colected throughout my life, and a backup of my memes folder

* ~/suckless - suckless software with my modification (dmenu, dwm and st)

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

#148

Post by glitchc »

- A folder called Repos on a data drive, not attached to the OS drive

- Each folder in Repos holds a repository for different types of work:

- Personal holds important documents, CVs, clearances

- Sensitive docs are passwd encrypted before push

- Thesis work in its own repo, now dormant

- Business in its own repo(s). Folders for individual contracts and personal dev work.

- Data folder to hold experimental data

- Music folder to hold CD rips and audiobooks

- Keys folder for repo keys

- Photos on dedicated external drive

- Desktop and Downloads contain important files, but limited to about 30 max (pending final destination)

- A Backups folder that holds old files from pre-repo days. Most are junk.

- Games folder for all games, Steam, etc. on dedicated drive labelled Scratch.

- Saved games end up wherever the games themselves store them, but I don’t care if I lose them.

- Documents folder holds temp files and junk from other family members. If indicated as important, moved to Personal repo.

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

#149

Post by robohoe »

omeid2 wrote: post #80

Using domain names and symbolic links. Seriously. github.com/omeid/upower-notify omeid.net/family/photos omeid.net/friends/joe/2018-royal-national-park-hike -> omeid.me/hikes/2018/royal-national-park omeid.me/hikes/2018/royal-national-park -> omeid.me/hikes/royal-national-park/2018 omeid.me/blog omeid.me/id some-company-i-work-for.com/projects/alpha-transit some-company-i-work-for.com/legal/contracts -> omeid.me/cont…

Using the same way but for repositories:

  ~/code/bitbucket.com/
  ~/code/bitbucket.com/
  ~/code/github.com/
  ~/code/github.com/

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

#150

Post by dwd »

amenghra wrote: post #30

- bunch of random files in ~/Desktop/ - more random files in ~/Desktop/old/ - more more random files in ~/Desktop/old/old/... - real stuff in ~/dev and ~/Site/ - a mix of important and unimportant files in ~/Downloads/

This...

https://xkcd.com/1360/

I once found some x86 assembly code I'd written decades ago and buried real deep (the folder names were in ALLCAPS and no more than 8 characters.

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