Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware, Ask DLS, Search

Help! How do I tidy up a disorganized hard drive?

Windowsby Lee Mathews (RSS feed) 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!


For the heavy lifting, download QDir - a quad-pane file manager. The first time I used QDir I thought it was complete overkill. However, when I read Jamie's note and looked at my own drive, I decided to give it another try.

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.


A good search app like Locate32 will help here, too. If you've already got a desktop search tool you prefer (like Google Desktop or Windows Search 4) then stick with it. I'm using Locate32 to dig deep into my subfolders and find all files of a similar type - EXE, for example. Once it's found them, it's a simple cut and paste to dump them all into the appropriate folder in QDir.

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!

Tags: file-management, file-manager, organization