Ask HN: How do you organize the files on your computer?

- Folder and file names as short as necessary. File names length, including the path, have a limit of 255 characters, after which they can give you trouble.

- File names that start with dates need to use yyyymmdd format.

- Avoid having too many subfolder branchings.

- Multiple pdf files are sometimes better to be combined into a single document.

- Have a TEMP folder to put all the stuff you are working with and that you will not mind erasing later. You should be confident to empty away this folder every few days without having to revise what's in it.

- Reorganize regularly (housekeeping) to maintain optimum file organization.

- Organize files as if to make it easy to find anything for a person who doesn't know where anything is. That person will be you in a couple of weeks.

Documents folder for non-code work- "active" "onhold" and "complete" folders- a sort of folder Kanban

Projects folder for code work, also github uploads and installs start there.

www folder for "production" things. I don't only do webdev but almost everything I produce will end up on the web, that's where I browser test and work on the folder hierarchy where it will ultimately be hosted.

I only do so for code files. Code goes in source/repos (Microsoft default) and code related tools go in source/tools. I have a bin folder in my home directory for miscellaneous programs, but most items on my computer get tossed into downloads

Randomly across different HDDs laying everywhere around my home and my friends' ones. The more important the file the more HDDs contain it. The Bitcoin wallet is somewhere few meters down in the ground for the case of nuclear war.

I don't outside of files that refer to each other like code. I just name it with something rational and fairly verbose and use search. My Word documents are scattered all over.