Organising PC

shopbot

Is there a way in XP to reorganise the files on the hard disk so that they are moved into folders by type. My filing has gone a bit out of control and manually dragging and dropping will take too long. Is there a way of sending all PDF's to a certain folder, all MP3's to a certain folder etc?

Quincy_3

When in a folder try, View arrange by type, then hold down Ctrl and click the files with the mouse then drop into a new folder.

shopbot

Is there a way to do it across all folders? I.e discard the current folder system and simply have a Word folder, Excel Folder etc?

Quincy_3

Well what you could do is open Windows Explorer, then click on My Documents then click on File New Folder then name it anything you like for example Word Documents and put all word files in that folder.

If you right click a new folder you can choose rename just incase you ened up with the name New Folder 01



Just some new folders I created called Help101-03

albertross_2

search for *.mp3
ctrl A
crtrl x to cut or ctrl c to copy

goto new mp3 folder and ctrl v to paste

be careful though, as you may cut and paste more than you intended.

shopbot

albertross wrote:

search for *.mp3
ctrl A
crtrl x to cut or ctrl c to copy

goto new mp3 folder and ctrl v to paste

be careful though, as you may cut and paste more than you intended.

Now why did'nt I think of that? Simple - thanks.

Which leads me nicely to my next question:
How does everyone keep their hard disks organised?

IvanOpinion

shopbot wrote:

Now why did'nt I think of that? Simple - thanks.

Which leads me nicely to my next question:
How does everyone keep their hard disks organised?

defintiely not by file extension

I have a set of 'my' folders under a 'my data' folder ... including 'my music, 'my clipart', 'my downloads' 'my documents', 'my photos' etc. Under each then I have various directories related to different topics (e.g. under 'my installs' I have 'internet', under that I have 'browsers', 'security', etc. containing the installation disks for each item ... under 'my documents' I have things like 'my holidays, 'my expenses', 'my letters' etc. ... 'my music' is then split by artiste and then by album). The advantage of having it all under one folder is that it makes backups much easier. I hate the 'documents & settings' stuff provided by Microsoft because it gets cluttered up with garbage.

My system works for me and considernig my personal data (excluding videos which are on another disk pack) is now just over 80Gb in size and contains hundreds of thousands of files .. I consider it an achievement that I can find anything

Ivan

shopbot

Thanks Ivan. My computer is becoming a bit of a bloated mess at the moment so I think a late spring clean is in order!

zombiecazz

lots of folders with lots of sub-folders. e.g. work folder contains the sub folders word, excel, access, PDF, Screenshops.
I try to remember to put things in the correct folders and I regularly try to have a clear out (try being the word).

Aiadi

I have just reinstalled XP on my laptop. Added the essentials only (antivirus, firewall, portable firefox, vista insparat and my wireless firware). After that I installed Sandbixie (from https://www.sandboxie.com). from there on all my applications are run from within sandboxie without the new stuff mixing up with my original system and at any point with a simple click of a button I can get rid of all the added content and go back to my initial system set up with a very fast laptop.

niceguyrichy

well I have about a half dozen different hdd's scattered around the house all full of cr*p, my organisation skills are non existent. but my advice would be to clearly define between pics, movies, work etc and have main folders for each that you save to, and try to keep each individual folder neat and organised as an individual

or do what I do, and when a drive gets full, buy a new one :rotfl: