I used to have complete anarchy in my Downloads folder, but I've since reformed my ways and now my Downloads folder is clean and my Videos and Documents folders are complete anarchy instead.

I don't keep anything relevant on my machine. It's just a way to access data hosted somewhere more safe. Also files and folders are terrible ways to organize anything, even remotely like Google Drive or similar stuff. It's Microsoft's and Apple's brainrot outliving the 90s. We should move forward.

These days, a shallow folder system. I have an electronica folder, and a Blanck Mass folder that definitely would go in there but that is full enough to stand on it's own. Actual taxonomic organisation would take way too many clicks, but flat organisation can result in trouble finding things, and just looks like you're a slob. (Although I'm guilty of having unsorted hoarder folders for things I only needed once, too)

There's probably a rule of thumb for optimal fanout on each GUI folder, related to our visual processing. Hmm. I wonder if there's a way to make the tree self-balancing as well.

Everything Everywhere All at Once

My PC has a secondary HDD that has my files. Movies, books, comics, TV shows, random stuff, etc. It's more or less organized in their own folders.

2tb external hard drive, and another 2tb drive that has a copy of everything.

It’s a MESS right now.

My main computer has two partitions: Windows 10 LTSB and Windows 10 premium. I have to use Premium now due to NVidia’s drivers not working on LTSB for like… years. So I boot into my secondary, smaller partition. But I’m still installing games to my first partition. Also there’s some left over games from my LTSB install. I want to install LTSC IoT for longer support, but I’m lazy and all it does right now is play games.

So everything used to go to my 1TB HDD, but then I bought a second 4TB HDD, so now things go to that. And I back stuff up to my like, five 1-4GB external hard drives. Also there’s a Pi running OMV in the living room with a 5GH external, for media. That one’s kinda messed up right now, things are glitchy when I stream from it, so I need to reinstall everything.

Then my partner’s computer has a couple terabytes of SSD space and a single 4TB HDD. Much easier. P

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

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

File trees 100 folders deep lol. I keep all stuff synced across my machines, no actual backup though...

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

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

Omg now they're trying to profile where you keep your shit so their hackers can find your porn stash more efficiently. Don't tell them Pike!

everything randomly distributed between ~/dl and ~/tmp (i dont even remember why i have both), and then i use lr to find stuff (alias lr='ls -lrth'). or find.

D: Downloads

Then the folders -

Films

TV programs

Software

• Everything inside these folders is a fucking car crash