this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2024
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I’ve struggled with digital organizing for decades. I tried tons of strategies from other people. There’s lots of good ideas, but ultimately you have to find something that works for you. I take some ideas from other systems and tweak them in ways that make sense for me.
I heavily rely on the default indexing of my OS. KDE is great, but most OSes have pretty good file searching tools. Just make sure to label files or at least folders in ways that are searchable.
Backups are super important (3 copies, 2 different types of media, 1 copy off site). I like to structure my data in a way that is easy to back up. I have a folder called “ephemeral” for stuff that I don’t care to back up so I don’t waste precious space. But i also try to have way more space than i need. I have a 4TB ssd on my main laptop and am planning on upgrading to 8TB soon. I have two different ZFS RAID3 arrays on my server where I copy data too. I started using syncthing to keep different types of media backed up between multiple computers. That way I can decide which computer is connected to which data set. Then I take regular backups of the sever to external drives and rotate those backup off site monthly.
I like to have a folder called “archive” where i put things that I want to hold on to, but will probably never need regular access too.
I also have a sensitive data folder for things that need to be on encrypted drives like financial statements, social security, passwords, ssh keys. Keeping it together helps me from forgetting it on an unencrypted drive. I had a laptop stolen once and it sucked not knowing what they may have pulled from it.
I have a media folder that contains folders for basic file types like documents, pictures, books, music, etc. The ephemeral folder has the same folder structure, but contains files that i don’t care if they disappear or get deleted. It is annoying to keep up with this though. But investing in storage space buys me time to not deal with it.
It will never be perfect so I learned how to stop worrying and love the search.