Automagic help to organising a filesystem?
February 17, 2012 12:22 PM Subscribe
What things can help me organise a file system?
I have what I think is a good filing system on my USB backup drive.
On my laptop however, I have a bunch of files which have become disorganised in multiple locations on NTFS and ext3 filesystems.
(Let this be a lesson to you, it has come about due to not sharing data between dual boot and also not always changing the default data folders in program settings)
I'm going through copying as best as I can but I could do with a hand.
What artificial intelligence is available to help me?
- find dupes (something easy rather than commandline)
- analyse files and help me name and file them
The USB drive is rarely available to connect directly to the laptop and is usually connected to a server I connect to by ssh. It would be great if I could que up a bunch of actions and then execute these when I return to the home network.
What is making this hard work is that it's not a bunch of mp3 files where the ID3 tage can be used. It's things like a download directory of .tar.gz, .zip, .avi, .flv, .jpg etc.
Unlike a business I can't group everything by date or client. These are personal files so I usually group into Pictures,Video,Documents but I then find something that could be in 2 catagories like Powerpoint presentation with a video in it.
What would help would be if I could organise what I already have a little bit more. For example, finding all .tar.gz and linking into one folder - things like that.
To be honest the hierarchy is a pain too and tags might be easier.
Once I have some order and just the key files are backed up to USB I'll use PartitionMagic or similar to group the data storage drives together as best as I can and go back to NTFS simply because linux can read it.
But because this is such a common problem (manually arranging files) and because of very useful mp3 catorgising automagic programs I just thought I better check to see if there's anything out there to help me.
I have what I think is a good filing system on my USB backup drive.
On my laptop however, I have a bunch of files which have become disorganised in multiple locations on NTFS and ext3 filesystems.
(Let this be a lesson to you, it has come about due to not sharing data between dual boot and also not always changing the default data folders in program settings)
I'm going through copying as best as I can but I could do with a hand.
What artificial intelligence is available to help me?
- find dupes (something easy rather than commandline)
- analyse files and help me name and file them
The USB drive is rarely available to connect directly to the laptop and is usually connected to a server I connect to by ssh. It would be great if I could que up a bunch of actions and then execute these when I return to the home network.
What is making this hard work is that it's not a bunch of mp3 files where the ID3 tage can be used. It's things like a download directory of .tar.gz, .zip, .avi, .flv, .jpg etc.
Unlike a business I can't group everything by date or client. These are personal files so I usually group into Pictures,Video,Documents but I then find something that could be in 2 catagories like Powerpoint presentation with a video in it.
What would help would be if I could organise what I already have a little bit more. For example, finding all .tar.gz and linking into one folder - things like that.
To be honest the hierarchy is a pain too and tags might be easier.
Once I have some order and just the key files are backed up to USB I'll use PartitionMagic or similar to group the data storage drives together as best as I can and go back to NTFS simply because linux can read it.
But because this is such a common problem (manually arranging files) and because of very useful mp3 catorgising automagic programs I just thought I better check to see if there's anything out there to help me.
Not a direct answer to your question, but somewhat on topic was the old WinFS scheme part of the Microsoft "Longhorn" development project that never (AFAIK) saw the light of day. I am OS agnostic (I have Win7, Ubuntu 11 and Mac Book Pro Leopard) and I don't know of anything as powerful as you are looking for (I'll watch this thread in case someone else does). It seems to me that the idea of "location inside a folder" conveying the topic/content of a file is so 20th century. What is needed is the ability to store files in semi-logical locations and, thru metadata, present filtered views (like Zotero does for Web research). In other words, just because there is no MP3 ID3 metadata or camera JPEG metadata doesn't mean there couldn't --- in principle --- be metadata for other files.
In case this helps after you get past your file disorganization problem, I will tell you the approach I use in my own file organization:
- I don't use the Windows concept of "My Documents", "My Music", etc. Instead I have "Documents", "Music", etc. folders on my file server with ACL access.
- I use robocopy in batch files executed at scheduled times to keep copies of files on separate machines and physical drives
- In some specific cases, I have taken to simulating metadata by enclosing attributes in the file name, such as "CarPurchaseTasklist_auto_shop_research_project.doc" and then I can use Agent Ransack (which has an MRU list of sets of drives to search across) to look for _shop (for instance) when I'm looking for all files related to shopping.
posted by forthright at 8:43 PM on February 17, 2012
In case this helps after you get past your file disorganization problem, I will tell you the approach I use in my own file organization:
- I don't use the Windows concept of "My Documents", "My Music", etc. Instead I have "Documents", "Music", etc. folders on my file server with ACL access.
- I use robocopy in batch files executed at scheduled times to keep copies of files on separate machines and physical drives
- In some specific cases, I have taken to simulating metadata by enclosing attributes in the file name, such as "CarPurchaseTasklist_auto_shop_research_project.doc" and then I can use Agent Ransack (which has an MRU list of sets of drives to search across) to look for _shop (for instance) when I'm looking for all files related to shopping.
posted by forthright at 8:43 PM on February 17, 2012
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posted by megatherium at 4:17 PM on February 17, 2012