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Nikita

How do you organize your files, Fediverse?

I have accumulated lots of stuff over the years: photos and videos, school and university documents, job files, private development projects, video projects, music, screenshots — all of which I want to keep backed up.

The problem I have is the directory structure. How would you organize all this so that stuff is always easy to find and duplicates won’t spawn?

I’ve tried Johnny.Decimal, and it didn’t work for me. Do you have other ideas? #AskFedi

3 May 2022 at 9:46 | Open on fosstodon.org
17 comments
Paulo Pinto :gnu: :fedora:
Ru (Tech) :blobcatsadlife:

@kytta I think I've taken to naming files as descriptive as I can and then just using a fuzzy finder...

Files are a mess.

3 May 2022 at 10:09 | Open on fosstodon.org
Inhji hat ein 🚲

@kytta I'd be curious to know what about Johnny.Decimal did not work for you.

3 May 2022 at 10:17 | Open on chaos.social
Nikita

@inhji it had too little categories per area and too many projects per category for me to manage stuff effectively. And, even though Johnny.Decimal promised to make my structure flatter, it only made more nested directories than I've already had. Other than that, I am way faster in navigating alphabetically sorted names rather than numbers. Just not my cup of tea 🤷‍♂️

3 May 2022 at 11:41 | Open on fosstodon.org
Twelve :GrapheneOS:

@kytta
I ended up making dump folders where i put everything i am too lazy to sprt throught. I deal with duplicated imaged by using digikam and for text files i have used meld a bit

3 May 2022 at 10:46 | Open on fosstodon.org
dcz

@kytta I think Perkeep's way is the way. Files aren't hierarchized, they are categorized.

I want a filesystem that stores files by their relationship to places, time, and people. Like a database.

3 May 2022 at 11:01 | Open on fosstodon.org
Nikita

@dcz yeah, I have already considered using, e.g., Obsidian for all my files, not just private notes

3 May 2022 at 12:09 | Open on fosstodon.org
Hippo 🦀🦀

@kytta may not work for everyone, but I burn DVDs every so often with important stuff I want to preserve. Then, everything from that year-or-two(ish) goes into the disc and I know where to find it.

Or go frantically hunting through 3-4 discs till it turns up.

I do tend to organise things, in an obvious-to-me-if-not-everybody-else kind of way, so that helps, but I guess I haven't reached so many files that I need a better system to find them 😅

3 May 2022 at 11:22 | Open on fosstodon.org
Nikita

@badrihippo alright, now I need to find a DVD burner 😂

3 May 2022 at 12:10 | Open on fosstodon.org
Kaito

@kytta @badrihippo I would caution you both about the lifetime of burned optical media. After a while, the chemicals break down and the data is lost.

It's different than purchasing a commercial disc that has been stamped from a master.

3 May 2022 at 12:48 | Open on ajin.la
Antonis
Jay

@kytta Thanks for introducing me to johnnydecimal.com! This is fascinating

3 May 2022 at 12:32 | Open on social.coop
Nikita

@jsit you're welcome, I hope it works for you because I find the idea damn genius!

3 May 2022 at 12:40 | Open on fosstodon.org
5uie1

@kytta Two systems that have worked for me at various points:
1. Similar to Johnny.Decimal, but with three letter abbreviations and no numbers. I had only three levels for them the depth. And all folders were watched to find duplicates through a script (that ran on boot). This did not have any year based system.
2. Year based file system with a similar folder structure for each year.

In both cases, I’d used rsync for backup.

Please do share what you eventually choose!

@kytta Two systems that have worked for me at various points:
1. Similar to Johnny.Decimal, but with three letter abbreviations and no numbers. I had only three levels for them the depth. And all folders were watched to find duplicates through a script (that ran on boot). This did not have any year based system.
2. Year based file system with a similar folder structure for each year.

3 May 2022 at 13:58 | Open on fosstodon.org
Tagomago

@kytta

-Docs (personal)
-Media (personal)
-Projects (personal)
-Work

Then mostly by topic/project and/or chronologically named directories inside. Johnny Decimal looks too rigid to stick to it. Maybe it works for personal files or abstract, administrative/managerial positions. Most projects comprise several kinds of files, and sometimes a high number of them, so I put those into different directories inside the project directory. Otherwise there would be pools of files, and I don't want that.

3 May 2022 at 15:46 | Open on mastodon.social
asriyanarthur

@kytta
hello. maybe this link will be useful for you: karl-voit.at/managing-digital-
it is about managing files, not only about photo.

3 May 2022 at 21:44 | Open on mastodon.ml
bojkotiMalbona

@kytta This question is really 2 in 1. How the data is organized and how it is stored/archived. W.r.t media, you’re aware of the lifetime limitations of optical media & flash media. So you’re using a hard drive to store your backups. Backup tech has become a sad state of affairs. Hard drives are cheaper than cassette tapes, but they have moving parts… heads that can crash. Not ideal.

6 May 2022 at 6:37 | Open on infosec.exchange
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