Downloads folder is a free-for-all; things get properly sorted when they’re moved onto the NAS - there is a seperate network drive for Multimedia (videos), Applications, Photos, etc. Each of those are then usually nested by Alphabetical folder.

And more importantly, how do you back up your important stuff?

I don’t have the energy or the patience so the *arr stack organizes everything for me automatically. Not 100 levels deep, maybe a dozen or so at most, but very clean and tidy.

File trees 100 folders deep but entirely in Downloads of course

I sort things every once in a while but eventually lose interest or patience. Would be nice to have a way to do it automatically. I suppose llms could help there, but I’m not sure if they’re quite there yet in terms of reliability.

• downloads clear themselves out after 30 days
• documents has all my projects and shit
• pictures/videos has my processed stuff
• larger (slower) hard drive has my raw video and photos
• desktop has nothing, I haven’t used desktop icons in 10 years

100% of everything is on the desktop. No borders no boundaries to divide the working class programs against themselves

Well whenever I want to keep track of an important document, I put AAA or 000 in front of the title. And then I make several copies. And then I make multiple folders intending to organize things. And then I wind up with 30 separate docs folders yet all my documents end up in the general My Documents, Downloads, or Desktop folders instead.

Everything Everywhere All at Once

deleted by creator

I have mine set up in groups, per hard drive.

Documents is set up for projects. Downloads gets grouped every few months and turned into a backup downloads folder on the backup hard drive.

So it goes from C:/Downloads into H:/Backups/Downloads/Downloads-11-19-2024

Every other hard drive is mostly just games, so it’s set up by project and the Games with whichever launcher.

I don’t have many projects that go more than 6 folders deep, most would be 4 at most

Your question made me curious, so I counted: the subdirectories in my home directory reach a maximum of 26 levels deep.

Ideally:

• Well-organized set of frequently-used and recent files on my laptop
• Media and old documents on my NAS, synced to an external hard drive I can remove for travel
• Each device/non-backup drive/USB drive/SD card backed up to its own folder on a large external drive
• A duplicate of said drive from another manufacturer
• An archival copy of my documents and photos (encrypted on microSD ofc) that I carry with me
• Additional copy of the most important stuff on M-Discs

Reality:

• Controlled mess on my laptop
• Dumping ground of random YT videos and CD rips on my NAS
• A well-curated external drive prepared in my pandemic free time
• An external drive with somewhat periodic backups of my devices alongside every unsorted file. I worry that some file paths have grown too long
• Duplicate of the two above on one large external drive
• Another external drive with files and backups of dubious usefulness that I refuse to delete
• An outdated copy of my documents and photos on an everyday carry microSD
• A stack of unused M-Discs

It goes to the Desktop, when the Desktop is full I delete everything that looks unimportant 👍

I have multiple folders of the form “desktop crap MM-DD-YY”