Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware, Ask DLS, Search
Help! How do I tidy up a disorganized hard drive?
by Lee Mathews Nov 21st 2008 at 10:00AM
DS Reader Jamie wrote recently looking for some assistance, saying:
I'm not the most disorganized of individuals: my music is in my music folder, etc. etc., but i have a fatal flaw. I put random stuff on my desktop, then it gets cluttered. My solution has been, in a word, poor. I put all the random stuff into a folder that usually goes by the name of misc or sort this out later. I was wondering what kind of advice you'd give for someone in this situation other than, "Get off your ass and go through it all!!"
For starters, Jamie, you hit the nail on the head - but don't fret, chum, you're not alone. Though I've planned ahead far enough to partition my drives on the laptop I'm using to post this article, the D: drive is a nightmarish mess of downloads, old backups, ISO images, and other files.
Let's get started by downloading your choice of duplicate file finders, like Easy Duplicate Finder or CloneSpy. Both work well, and will save time by getting rid of unnecessary files before we start organizing. For the rest of the work, we're going manual - we created our messes that way, so that's how we're cleaning them up!
In a single QDir window, I can open my downloads folder (my dumping ground for files) and three others that will help me sort things out. In my case, I'm setting up personal (for family pictures, documents, and files), applications, and media.
QDir supports filtering, so pick a file extension in your "working" pane and tackle file types one at a time. I started with mp3, avi, mpg, and other media types and got them all moved first. Once I'm done with my initial sort, I'll change my QDir working pane to media and set up subfolders for music, pictures, and video and start the process again.
It's lather, rinse, repeat, Jamie - but the right tools will make the process a little bit more bearable.
What other apps do you find useful for tackling hard drive disarray? Share 'em in the comments!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Peter said 12:38PM on 11-21-2008
It really depends how detailed you want to get about it. If the files themselves are named something reasonable, then you can use Windows Desktop Search or Google Desktop to find them regardless of where you store them.
If you really want to see a nice tree structure of folders and files, then the only answer is "Get off your ass and go through it all!!" Once that is done, keep up with it. It's much easier to deal with one file at a time as needed than 500 later.
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Unknown said 10:41AM on 11-21-2008
Step 1.
Create c:\pr0n
Step 2.
Put all your pr0n in said folder. Organize by genre, then subgenres like outfits and race, etc. If you need help, there is facial (heh) recognition software that can assist you. (and help you find more), kind of like iTunes.
Step 3.
Get an online backup service like SugarSync, Jungledisk, Carbonite, etc, and make sure your legacy is safe and secure in the 'cloud'. Or, preferably, deep in a mountain vault.
Step 4. Create C:\Files
Step 5. Throw everything else in that folder.
Step 6. Enjoy!
At least that's how alot of my clients do it.
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Sir Loin said 11:09AM on 11-21-2008
That photo at the top of the article brought back some hilarious memories, I still have a box like that full of Atari 800XL disks :D And they still work!
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Lee Mathews said 11:09AM on 11-21-2008
Thank god I didn't decide to go with the box of punchcards ;-)
Sir Loin said 11:45AM on 11-21-2008
Man...when I was in the Air Force in the early 90's, they were still using those as well as rolled punch-paper. Hopefully they've upgraded since then!
Sir Loin said 11:50AM on 11-21-2008
Thanks for the link to Q-Dir, btw...hadn't seen that one before and am trying it now and liking it so far.
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Michael Wexler said 12:38PM on 11-21-2008
Besides organizing, you often need to find where programs are dumping all their temps or downloaded files. http://windirstat.info/ is the home of WinDirStat, an open source program which shows you directories full of files, and lets you clean them up. Uses a TreeMap display which is very intuitive.
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Martin-T said 1:11PM on 11-21-2008
I have all downloads go to the desktop and then create a folder for each, giving it a name that ID's the file along with the date I downloaded it. It takes an extra 20 seconds and stops me from wasting too much time later, trying to figure out what the file is and why I had it there in the first place.
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Scopique said 2:29PM on 11-21-2008
One tool that I have found really useful in moving many files is PikyBasket. It's a context menu option that allows you to collect several files, which you can then copy or move all at once.
It used to be free (I think), but it looks like the developers have chosen to "monitize" it.
http://www.conceptworld.com
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rothgar said 2:22PM on 11-21-2008
My main problem was always figuring out what folders I needed. In vista I had to create a few more folders to make things organized.
I created Scripts and Install folders in my user folder and in my downloads folder I created a torrent, firefox, FTP, dropbox so I could keep all my downloads separated. I used to use Lifehackers Belvedere script to keep that organized by type but it just got to many sub folders.
Once I had my downloads folder organized (which is where most of my mess comes from). I added a toolbar to the folder on the taskbar. for quick access by just dragging the folder to the taskbar. Actually this inspires me to write about all my other ways to keep organized. Check out my site for a few more tips and screenshots. www.1n73r.net
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Jamie said 4:20PM on 11-21-2008
Good article :) downloading the apps now! thanks lee, not impressed you changed my British spellings tho ;)
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Lee Mathews said 4:20PM on 11-21-2008
Laugh...My apologies...Even though I've been in Canada for a decade I still have US spelling tendencies.
Kunal said 12:57AM on 11-22-2008
Fantastic article... i have way toooo many duplicate files spreaded over 2 laptops and 2 desktops... and ofcourse some of them on my online server... i now have to sit and download all the files and get rid of duplicates...
I think i have a looong weekend ahead ;)
Cheers
Kunal
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Wil said 5:49PM on 11-22-2008
I downloaded and loved QDir, until I closed it and opened it again. It had reverted to the original view, and didn't remember the folders I had opened the first time.
So I'm reverting to Xplorer2
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ryzza007 said 9:13AM on 11-23-2008
I like using a program called TreeView - helps you to find where your HDD space is being wasted on large unused files so you can burn/delete them.
I have the same misc folder on my desktop with a whole lot of rubbish in there that I haven't put into my 'Software Archive' yet. In there I have other folders for all my program installers (ie I have folders in there called '1st boot' (for all the basics I install after installing Windows), then Boot disks & tools, DVD burning, Dev tools, Display Customization, Drivers, Games, Internet tools, Media tools, Networking tools, Portable apps, Office tools, Reference tools, System Tools, and Windows updates. It's handy to share that folder so any PC I build can quickly install stuff from it, and I normally don't have to go hunting for what I need or d/l it again.
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Shelley said 6:08PM on 11-23-2008
Thanks for the post Lee, you're always quite insightful, helpful, and reminder-ful :) I've only had this laptop like a year, and I have an external (barely used) hard drive, but I do plan on organizing and backing up some day. Your article is a gentle reminder of that.
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othello said 1:39AM on 11-24-2008
Two old and free programs I use are SequoiaView (father of windirstat?) to see what things are eating up my hard disk space, and remove those which I think I don't need anymore. For duplicates, I use Visual CD for cataloging stuff, it has a duplicate finder from its Tools menu.
SequoiaView -- http://w3.win.tue.nl/nl/onderzoek/onderzoek_informatica/visualization/sequoiaview/
Visual CD -- http://www.boozet.org/visualcd.htm
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zkam said 12:00AM on 11-25-2008
I haven't tried Locate32, but recently I started using "Everything" for file searches.
http://www.voidtools.com/
It's great for searching by file name/type (instead of contents within the file). It's extremely fast at searching, and does not require building a huge index, since it uses NTFS built in file information. Therefore the index is very small, and is built very quickly. (The catch is that it only works on NTFS file systems). According to the FAQ, a clean XP install can be indexed in about 1 second, and a million files will be indexed in about a minute. On my system, I have about half a million files indexed into a tiny 2 MB database.
I've used Google Desktop and X1 in the past and I liked both (I preferred X1), but they both required lots of time and disk space to build the index (if you want to index everything, which I did). They could also be CPU hogs at times. I found that most of the time, I didn't need to search by text within a file, just the file name would suffice (or something like "all jpg files within a certain directory tree"). For this "Everything" is fantastic. You can using simple wildcards, or more complex regular expressions. Also, it has a built-in web server, which is great for searching from another machine.
As others have mentioned, I also use TreeSize, Windirstat, and also JDiskReport, depending on how I want to visualize the disk space usage.
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dreamerkid.com said 4:54PM on 12-16-2008
I think that when moving LARGE amounts of data you need to use something like teracopy (it's free http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.php )
sometimes when you try to cut and paste GIGS of data, I find windows craps out. I use this with the Q-dir recommended above as well as with file tools.
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