New OS - better folder organisation this time?

[Doug]

I started with Windows 95 and in those days I regarded the whole hard drive
as mine to organise all folders any way I chose. Subsequent versions of
Windows made certain folders such as (My) Documents "special" and I have
only gone along with that partially, so that my stuff is stored haphazardly.
For example with my current Vista Home Premium system I have a dozen
websites I run stored in sub-folders of C:\webs, I still run DOS based
MasterFile Professional from C:\MPRO, and I have numerous home-made icons in
C:\IC.

With the arrival of Windows 7 I want to do it better. With a twelve
megapixel camera, photographs take up a disproportionate amount of room, and
storing them (and backing them up) along with documents doesn't fit
comfortably. There must be some really neat ways of organising stuff on hard
drives. And keeping all data (and settings?) out of the installation drive
(or partition anyway) seems attractive (I have two physical drives of 233GB
each - I will probably replace each of them with 1TB). The danger is that,
in my enthusiasm for getting Win 7 up and running, I will just copy folders
into the same locations as before and muddle along as I have in the past. I
would like to do better this time and would appreciate guidance as to how to
approach this.

At the moment I run scheduled backups of my whole C drive (apart from the
few files in use) using Second Copy to my D drive daily. I also use Second
Copy manually to backup to off-site mobile hard drives (Iomega eGo) weekly,
encrypted in this case using open source TrueCrypt.

Doug




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[Jon]

I started with Windows 95 and in those days I regarded the whole hard drive
as mine to organise all folders any way I chose.

So why are you keen to give up this right? Afraid of the vast power that you
wield over the hard drive?

Neither Vista nor Windows 7 is about more power to the user. The trend is
more power to the system, and a progressive dumbing down of the user to the
point of zombified stupefaction. Future operating systems will no doubt
continue this trend.

First they came for your toolbar. Then they came for your taskbar. Next
they'll come for your folders...




Subsequent versions of

Windows made certain folders such as (My) Documents "special" and I have
only gone along with that partially, so that my stuff is stored
haphazardly. For example with my current Vista Home Premium system I have
a dozen websites I run stored in sub-folders of C:\webs, I still run DOS
based MasterFile Professional from C:\MPRO, and I have numerous home-made
icons in C:\IC.

With the arrival of Windows 7 I want to do it better.

A noble aim, but since doing things 'differently' and doing them 'better'
are not synonymous, you'd need to define what you mean by 'better'.




With a twelve

megapixel camera, photographs take up a disproportionate amount of room,
and storing them (and backing them up) along with documents doesn't fit
comfortably. There must be some really neat ways of organising stuff on
hard drives. And keeping all data (and settings?) out of the installation
drive (or partition anyway) seems attractive (I have two physical drives
of 233GB each - I will probably replace each of them with 1TB). The danger
is that, in my enthusiasm for getting Win 7 up and running, I will just
copy folders into the same locations as before and muddle along as I have
in the past. I would like to do better this time and would appreciate
guidance as to how to approach this.

Your question seems to contain the solution ie putting your data on a
separate partitions from your os, so I'm not sure what you're asking here.

At the moment I run scheduled backups of my whole C drive (apart from the
few files in use) using Second Copy to my D drive daily. I also use Second
Copy manually to backup to off-site mobile hard drives (Iomega eGo)
weekly, encrypted in this case using open source TrueCrypt.

The need for backups is unlikely to be going away any time soon, while the
potential for physical failure exists.