Data Management

Each of us with a computer has personal data in some form or another. It might be pictures of your travels, videos from your last birthday party, important financial data, application software, games, etc. The question is how do you organize all this information? Here are a few suggestions.

Partitions

Partitions, if you are not aware, allow you to cut your physical hard drive(s) into several logical drives. For example, let’s say you have single hard drive of 100GB in size but would like to split it up into five, 20GB, logical drives. You can use partitions to do that. In my case, I use the following setup:

1. Main (C:\) - Where the Windows operating system is installed. This partition should be roughly 20GB in size or has enough space to hold the operating system with room to grow.
2. Apps (D:\) - Where all applications are installed. This partition is generally 20GB or more in size. Having never liked the default Windows install directory for applications, Program Files, I choose to install all applications to a dedicated partition. The reason the Program Files directory is bad is because it is a dumping ground for all software and tends to get convoluted rather quickly when trying to determine what you installed versus what came default with the operating system. When installing software to the apps partition, I generally try to keep software organized by company and product folders. For example:
   
3. Games (E:\) - Where all games are installed. This partition is generally 30GB or more in size. Same pattern applies to games as it does for standard application software. The only difference is that games generally consume larger amounts of disk space so I keep them in a separate partition rather than throw them all on the Apps partition.
4. Files (F:\) - Where all personal files go. This partition is generally 50GB or more in size. Further details are provided in the Directory Structures section below.
5. Work (G:\) - Where all work-related files go. These are usually files used in making a finished product. For example, say you are working on a new audio CD, DVD video, rendering 3D images, fixing up panoramic photos, etc. You might need multiple versions of the source files and possibly multiple formats to be produced as output. This is a great place to put work like this. When the work is finished these files can be deleted or backed up to some other media format.
6. Swap (H:\) - Dedicated solely to the Windows pagefile.sys file (read about virtual memory for more information). This is actually not a partition but a dedicated hard drive. This means that I use one hard drive for partitions C through F and another hard drive that stores the page file. The reason for this is that when system memory (RAM) fills up or needs to be paged out, it goes to the page file on the hard drive. By default, this is the pagefile.sys located in the root of your C:\ drive or wherever your operating system is installed. In order to improve system performance, it is a good idea to have a fast hard drive, generally spinning at 10,000 RPM or higher. The hard drive doesn’t need to be large because the Windows operating system can only support up to 4GB of RAM which means that your page file can only grow to 4GB max as well. So a small but fast hard drive is all you need for storing this single page file.

The “Files” Directory Structure

While most drives and partitions are fairly self-explanatory and already described above, the Files (F:\) partition, however, needs a little extra explanation. It is the storage area for all personal data and can get messy. Generally, I like to use the following directory structure:

• \archive - Where files get archived. Resumes, personal documents, digital books, old software code, etc.
• \cache - The cache directory is organized by program sub-directories and is the data store of personal information saved by an application. Some programs allow you to choose where you want personal files to be saved on your hard drive. For example, Quicken saves all financial data to a .qdf file of your choice. By default this file is saved in Windows Documents and Settings directory structure. Again, I don’t like the defaults, so I put all data in this cache folder instead. For example: \cache\quicken\my-finances.qdf. Same pattern applies for other applications if possible. For those applications that don’t offer this capability, I try to export the data from them instead. Firefox is a good example because you can export/backup your bookmarks and installed themes and plugins this way.
• \downloads - A place for all downloaded software. All software is organized by category. For instance, I put all audio editing software in an audio sub-directory. Here is an example:
  
• \misc - As the name applies, where miscellaneous, temp, or unorganized files go.
• \multimedia - A place for photos, videos, computer graphics, and all things related to media. I divide this folder up by audio, photos, videos, wallpaper, etc. For photos and videos, I organize them by year/month/day. For example:
  
• \unfiled - Where unfiled files go. I teach all programs that allow for default folder settings to put all files in this folder so that I might move them later to some other location. This way if the folder is not empty, I know there is still some filing to do before my desk is clear so-to-speak. For example, I have trained the following programs:
• Firefox - All downloads go here without question, no dialog prompt, etc.
• SnagIt - The default location for creating screenshots and video captures.
• iTunes - The default location for downloading new podcasts, music, etc.
• FeedStation - The default location to download podcast enclosures.
• \video - Where all digital videos go. The structure is organized exactly as the images structure mention earlier.
• \xfer - A place for transferring files between computers on the network.

Backups

Keeping data organized as suggested above makes backing up data really easy. For me, it is just a mater of backing up the Files partition and a few folders in the within the Documents and Settings directory of the Main partition. This occurs due to the fact that some applications make it nearly impossible to adjust program behavior for storing personal data to the Files partition and must back up parts of the Main partition in addition to the Files partition.

When backing up data, I keep everything backed up to an external hard drive. This happens nightly in an automated fashion using Nero BackItUp software.

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