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I just did a search for "Organizing Your Hard Drive" on this site (using two or three different phrases) and found nothing, so I thought I would ask.
Pre-Question before the main question: Did I miss the obvious ? Is there a topic or group for this already ? If so, please point me.
Main question: How do you arrange your hard drive ?
I just don't like the way mine has evolved into such an obfuscated convolution of DISorganization.
My not-so-perfect inventory of my drive shows me...
- Folders: 116,354
- Files: 620,448
...which is plenty good enough for our purposes here.
That's an average of 5 or 6 files per folder, which is an absolutely inaccurate way of understanding the numbers. The arithmetic average is by no means truly "average" as we humans understand the word.
I want to start a couple of home study courses, and I have this belief that my disorganized hard drive is going to thwart all efforts before I begin the first one.
Conversely, I have a sincere belief that an organized drive would significantly enhance and greatly increase my ability to absorb the knowledge that I'm trying to acquire.
So I'm up for suggestions and ideas on how other people have approached this.
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I tell the drive where I want it to put stuff and the drive seems to obey. Even if it really doesn't, it makes it seem like it obeys.
Really, now - you organize a hard drive (or refrigerator, for that matter) based upon your particular needs. You simply put things in places where you'll be able to find them again, preferably conveniently and from wherever you need to access them from later. If you never need to access a file again then you probably don't need it to begin with.
Really!
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Since years I organize my PC in a "system drive" on which in only Windows and the installed apps. For my data and even ALL download I use an extra drive.
So I am only one step away "formatting and reinstalling" windows and most of all: I know where all my data is. 
Press F1 for help or google it.
Greetings from Germany
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I do exactly the same. I have good reasons for using a separate drive for data:
1. It means I can make an image for the systems drive only, in case I ever need to restore it. I don't want such images bloated with a pile of data folders. Image files are large enough as it is.
2. It's easy to backup data only. Just make sure everything important on the data drive is backed up to an external drive. Since I have images of the systems drive, I am not concerned about backups for that drive.
If I am attacked by a virus, like the ransom virus, I simply restore the systems drive from a recent image, and the data drive from the external backup. Images and data backups are kept in separate external drives that are normally disconnected, to avoid infection.
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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Aha
Hardware config affects software config affects user experience.
Yes, good sense, both of you.
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I use something like:
\dev
\dev\desktop\
\dev\desktop\C#\<individual proj names >
\dev\desktop\python\<indvidual proj names >
\dev\
\dev\web\<individual proj names>
\dev\web\<sample>\js\
\dev\web\<sample>\css\
\dev\web\mvcProjects\<individual projects>
\data\
\data\write\
\data\write\<proj name="">
\data\
This works well and allows me to find things relatively easily.
However, admittedly, I often spread stuff around and gunk it up a bit and lose things. 
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Most of mine are stacked in a pile next to my NAS, sitting in a 3.5" hotswap tray, but some are in a USB enclosure. The older ones are sitting in a box under my desk, waiting to be wiped with DBAN and then sent for recycling.
Oh, you mean organizing files. Never mind.
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I've been meaning to organize my hdd, but it seems like the main point of that is to know where to find files and for that I just use Everything Search Engine[^]
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Very nice find.
Nice looking website. His first impression is excellent.
The rest of the idiots who are cluttering the screen could take some instant lessons from that guy.
Thank you very much. I think I'll try that before I spend hours and money on a philosophical/emotional restructuring.
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I've been using that for many months, and find it an invaluable tool. The initial indexing does take a few minutes, but then I have 172,053 folders and 4,466,927 files on my disk. Once the indexing is done, even wildcard search is almost instant.
Just to make a point, I've used Windows Explorer to try and find those numbers, but at the time I'm writing this it's only halfway done counting, whereas Everything (which I started later) has long finished indexing, creating the searchable database, and providing the results.
P.S.: Windows Explorer eventually finished, but for some reason it only displays 170,071 folders and 4,494,444 files - I have no idea why it's missing some 2000 folders and more than 170,000 files 
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
modified 3-Mar-16 2:48am.
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'Sbeen a few hours since I downloaded this ... a few less since I uninstalled it after an install.
Did accepting the default settings make an "OK" button visible in that sparse GUI window you get before your uninstall or did you just know intuitively to wait for some asylum tokens to come down the pike in the form of normal GUI things like ... buttons .. to appear?
I might try to reinstall this. 'All depends.
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There are no buttons, only a menu bar at the top. It is what it is: a file search window, so all it really needs is the text field to enter the (partial) file name you're looking for (it is located directly below the menu bar), and the result list, which fills up once it's done indexing.
There is no need to [start] the search - it starts instantly (showing the full file and folder list), and corrects the result list with every single letter you enter in the search box.
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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Not only that,,,,
But,,,,
The Author Responded To A Question From Me !!!
I put up a question, something like, "...Do you suggest the x64 or the x86 version for a machine with blah-blah-blah ?..." with my E-mail address, on his "contact us" page.
A few hours later I saw an answer, equally simple, one line, x86 for performance unless your tree is super huge; or something like that.
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Agreed, I don't know what I did before I found Everything.
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Ditto on the directory organization ... but I use Copernic Desktop Search (http://copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search/). It has good file previews. It is most useful for finding code I've written before in previous applications. Search, preview in CDS and copy/paste if you need to. It's not free, but it's not expensive.
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Thx, it looks useful. The one area where Everything is lacking is that it doesn't look inside files like Copernic can. For finding previous code Visual Studio's search (shift+ctrl+f and setting the options for directory and file type) works pretty well.
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As a long term user of Everything, it helps finding things very quickly. I've installed it on most customer machines. Even for things you know exactly where they are, most of the time it is quicker to open Everything and type a couple of chars instead of clicking through a deep hierarchy.
But Everything still does not organize the disk which was the request of this thread. It just takes the urge for a very strict organization upfront.
From my point of view you have to take care of a few things personally:
1. Have a good naming scheme
2. Somehow group files into meaningful sections/directories.
3. Use the self-organizing file features of apps when available (iTunes etc.).
4. Avoid duplicates!
5. Throw away what you don't need.
@1: This might become a problem for others. If you move such a file to a (public) server you might receive a lot of disagreement about the name. Only your brain knows what to search for. From our customer machines I know that Everything only helps to find things you know like apps. It does not help to find office documents that they have created with their own naming scheme.
@2: This was the original question. No general solution! But you can reorganize all sections anytime according to it's growth: Everything helps to keep track finding this after a reorg. Also deep hierarchies are no problem because you have direct access to the file via Everything.
@4: Using this feature, a whole directory tree is hidden by the app and you don't have to take care of organizing that part.
@3: The more often you use Everything, the more you will find duplicates. Act immediately on those, otherwise the search returns more & more results over time and you still have to open these files and find the one you are looking for.
@5: Unneeded files are cluttering your search results. If you are a "collector" and don't want to delete them just put them in a .zip file.
The biggest disadvantage of Everything is that it is normally not available on file servers. Once you get used to use it all the time, a file server appears to you as a monolithic block which takes a lot of effort to browse.
Finally there is "WinDirStat[^]" which shows a graphical overview how the disk space is used.
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Christian Scholze wrote: It does not help to find office documents that they have created with their own
naming scheme.
Whahuh!!!????
dir /s c:\*.exe ...
I'm glad a user took the time to add some useful comments to this thread. I installed this thing when I started reading about organizing something everyone has but KNOWS is quite the nebulous thing. The hard drive.
And with the influx of hand-held device thumbizan posters now, that nebulosity has spiked to such a magnitude I'm no longer willing to waste my time responding to ... Doctor Who ... because he's always out of aspect.
Oh yeah. And quickly uninstalled it. I found unticking all options, waiting for completion, then first time startup, gave me this GUI with no recourse to any control at all. So I ditched it right then and there.
My experience with the Windows Search and it's indexer, ever since that beautiful HTML helpfile that allowed me to search-in-find-set was deep-sixed, the whole idiom fell into the abyss where that bridge out never materialized. So third-party pay-through-the-nose is the only way to get any work done.
Christian Scholze wrote: with their own naming scheme
(I suppose I didn't wait long enough for the "app" to finish indexeing)
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Google Desktop Search.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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- System drive for OS and programs (SSD - 1 TB)
- Working drive for stuff I'm working on (WD Black - 2 TB)
- Backup and Storage drive to back up the stuff I'm working on, archiving, saving downloads, etc (WD Black - 4 TB).
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Very good choice!
I go there a step further ...
- C: - SSD 0,5 TB
System drive for OS and programs with ntfs links to other HDs. - D: - WD Blue 1 TB
Data drive for stuff, like documents, projects, source code, etc. - E: - WD Blue 1 TB
Work ground used by stuff I'm working on, like run/debeg project softwar (without source codes) and for databases, web server, VMs. - F: - WD Blue 1 TB
Mainly for outsourcing of some SSD places like, like Temp, etc., to protect / increase the lifetime of the SSD.
The rest of it I use for work and editing of multimedia files, and for extremely large amounts of data in DBs. - Backup, archiving, saving downloads, etc., all go to server shares on the network .
Something about which we often break our head:
"In the name of the Compiler, the Stack, and the Bug-Free Code. Amen."
(source unknown)
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Simple, use one partition is for the OS and programs. The rest of the drive is up to you. For the last few builds, I have a secondary partition on the main drive for backups, then one or more data drives. As for organization of content, that just takes practice and time to develop your own method. Anything that is date sensitive like customer databases, I always keep in folders named yyyy-mm-dd so that they sort like they should.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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I'm very particular about my folder structure.
All downloads go onto my External drive which is share across the network:
F:\Downloads\Microsoft\Visual Studio\14\Professional...
F:\Downloads\Microsoft\SQL Server\14\Server...
F:\Downloads\Microsoft\SQL Server\14\SSMS...
F:\Download\Malware Bytes\2.2.0...
For projects I usually do:
C:\Projects\Clients[company name][app name][version]\trunk...
C:\Projects\Sandbox[app name]...
C:\Projects\app1...
C:\Projects\app2...
For documents, I NEVER use 'My Dcuments/Files/Pictures/Movies' - etc.. Stupid idea IMHO...
I use:
C:\Documents[Subject 1]\doc1.txt
C:\Documents[Subject 1]\doc2txt
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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