How to go about organizing media?

[William B.]

I've been trying to make space on my laptop and phone. Was thinking about what I should keep and could do without, cause like maybe some things are nice to keep for different reasons. Maybe you guys could suggest some reasons

Right now I just have one folder where I put everything and most are unnamed and I think there are many doubles by mistake, it's really chaotic.

Recently I deleted my old YouTube account and restarted it with the same name, kind of a mistake cause I had a lot of favorited videos that I'll probably forget and not come across again.

Also I deleted my super cool Cinder Gates SoundCloud page too I wanted that to be like my band name with a Post-Hardcore type genre vibe whatever that is, but this idea was from awhile back.

Deleted all my GarageBand files too. I'm thinking now that I have some experience I could do things better like straight away name a file and stuff.

So I guess the question is "what kind of things should I keep?" Aside from tips on organizing. Some files are like 2-3gbs.

Might be a lot of rubbish I got saved up

Thanks in advance!

 

[Andrew Milner]

I thrive on having my stuff organized. Sometimes I overdo it a bit but given how you have described everything you may need to start with some baby steps:

- figure out what files serve what purpose by giving them a name
- figure out certain categories for those files and create folders based on those categories; then, move each file into the corresponding folder
- figure out if your folders need any subfolders
- use relevant names for everything

That's how I'd start things.

 

[iridecently]

On top of what Andrei said, I would also look into using something like Dropbox/iCloud or even a physical hard drive for files you don't want to lose. You really don't want your computer randomly dying on you and lose all your important stuff because of it (I've had it happen before...)

 

[Lindsey]

I've started making a backup (Again/finally) of all my stuff. It's an overwhelming mess, but it helps when you sort everything on year and month. You can make specific folders in those such as ''drum'', ''guitar'', ''original samples'' etc.

AND MAKE A BACK UP

 

[Sinisnuthear]

Usually go by albums. Or project ideas - make it a folder. After that sub folders for the backing tracks, mix, and master

 

[Ed Seith]

There's three major parts, and they both suck.

Part 1. Create category folders, review ALL that you have, and drop them into category folders. Remember that "trash" is a category, and empty the trash when you're done.

Part 2. Go into each category folder and rename each "keeper" to a name that has descriptive relevance to you, even if it's something like "Cool description of compressors at 5 minutes 20 seconds"

Part 3. Remember how much that sucked, and use your categories and descriptive names ALWAYS, every time you get new media.

 

[William B.]

Cool thanks! Already deleted some awhile back cause of memory issues.
It's a lot to listen back on
I've seen one of those drives, I'll try to get one sometime