Organising PC

U've_been_framed

I store all my data in a separate partition from everything else. Ideally it would be on a separate hard drive. If anything goes wrong with windows all my documents, photos, music etc should be safe. It certainly makes things simpler when deciding what to back up.
As regards organising files - creating folders according to subject matter is the simplest way. You can then put folders inside these folders e.g. I am involved with a local society and have a folder called 'Local Society' inside that folder are folders for each year, and also folders for any special projects that we might have. It is also possible to put a shortcut in one folder that links to a file that is in a separate folder.

billywhizz

Download this too
http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search/
Its a search engine similar to the Google Desktop Search that allows you to search many filetypes on your PC in various ways, it's free and better than the google offering (IMHO) and lightning quick.

Little_John

I have seperate drives for everything
All my games are or 1 drive, music on another, dvd rips on another 3 and everything else on another drive.

Documents my dad uses the my documents folder and uses a seperate folder for each thing he is involved in.
I store my stuff in a folder on a drive kind of like my docs so I can get it from both the pc and my laptop.

sorting stuff in to files by type is crazy, searching for *.doc could be sucidal as not all the .doc files on your pc will be yor documants they could be help files from programs, same with pictures.

wolfman

U've_been_framed wrote:

I store all my data in a separate partition from everything else. Ideally it would be on a separate hard drive. If anything goes wrong with windows all my documents, photos, music etc should be safe. It certainly makes things simpler when deciding what to back up.

This is the way to go. Keep the OS (ie Windows) totally seperate from your personal data.

I currently have one hard drive for Windows, and another for anything personal. This includes music, movies, and even Firefox profiles, Mail files etc... If you don't have two hard drives then at least use seperate partitions.

I also use Acronis TrueImage for keeping a backup of my Windows drive. I basically install it perfectly, get everything setup how I like it then take an image with TrueImage. I update this image every once in a while. That way I can recover my OS within 5 minutes should something go wrong.