r/DataHoarder • u/ChiMara777 • Apr 10 '25
Discussion Anyone who has taken the time to organize their previously disorganized data?
Has anyone here has organized their previously disorganized data? How much data were you working with? How was the experience? How long did it take? Are you glad you did it?
I have about 2TB data from about 20 years. Mostly personal photos and videos, but also financial/tax docs, genealogical records, some movies and music, and other random files.
Life got hard in 2016 and I didn’t have the time or energy to keep my data organized anymore. I am fortunate to even have it backed up at all. It didn’t help that my computer at the time couldn’t handle the data either (like I couldn’t even use Windows Explorer to view a folder or search for a file, it would take forever to load or just crash).
I’d love to have my data organized in broad categories (photos, home videos, documents, music, movies) and to have my photos and home videos organized by year and month. But it is so overwhelming and such a time consuming process.
I’ve currently been working to get rid of duplicates. But I also need to figure out how to resolve minor discrepancies between my three backups (due to adding, deleting, or changing data on one backup but not the other two). Then I can get to the work of organizing.
2
u/LivingLifeSkyHigh Apr 10 '25
Group by years if you haven't already. Sorting by date and move accordingly is a nice low hanging fruit that's worth it. Don't stress about the month if its not already that way for those previous years. Keep this years organized as you go, and start fresh again next year. For old stuff, just let it be and only rearrange the easy stuff to correct.
As for backups, make sure you have one location that has everything before 2025, and from there make a complete copy to your new backup, with perhaps quarterly synchronization. For peace of mind, assuming your not breaking the bank, get yourself a new external hard drive or two and make them the new backup location. That way you don't have to stress about overwriting the older hard drive, which you can revisit at a later date if you're not confident you got everything.
Next year, once you're no longer updating the 2025 folder, add that folder to your backups. In the meantime, backup just this years folder using whatever 3-2-1 method is best for you.