There’s an article in today’s Wall Street Journal by a guy named Robbie Shelll, about how he decluttered his hard drive now that he’s retired. Maybe I could learn something?
1. The writer has stored all his files on his hard drive…in alphabetical order. He has not used folders. My wife does that, but she has only a few hundred files.
2. Robbie is so proud of going through his files—actually reading them. Seems there are “several thousand”. He gets rid of all except 200. 200!!
3. He’s so proud of what he’s done, he writes this advice column. In the WSJ.

quote:

The downsizing promised to be a slog. After all, our baby boomer generation is the first to have technology allowing us to effortlessly create a digital archive with the small and large details of our existence. It’s a mixed blessing given the unlimited space that technology offers and my preference for storing files alphabetically rather than in defined folders. With the ability to save every proposal, draft, report, idea, reference or random thought, whether deserving or not, I had created a monster.

OK, on rereading this for my amusement and yours, I see that there’s a drawing, and it shows somebody with long hair, sipping tea and looking at papers. Then the text says “my husband and I”. Now it could still be a dude. But a gay guy would actually keep his files compulsively organized, right?

So maybe my wife wrote this using a Nom de plume.

I should add that I tried repeatedly to write a comment on the online site, but was unable to do so. No, I’m not emailing the author.

Well, you did not link the article so I did not read it, not that important to go looking. I'm a retired IT professional and have seen it all, I recall one lady who had more music than Sirius and it was totally organized, problem was she did it on work time.. lol. Other people stored everything in the root of C:\ or on their desktop. The best/worst was the engineering department that stored their CAD files on two different servers but with many of the same folder names and files...I inherited that mess...

I am actually doing sort of the same thing, I ran a large Network infrastructure and had numerous computers both in my home and at various work locations. I am now going through the hard drives before I destroy them, yes I have to read some files-at least glance at them and yes the closer I get to finishing the better I feel, it can be a daunting task and I was organized---Imagine that because I'm not a woman or a compulsive gay person-(your words not mine, can't believe you said that)!!!!

60

A totally flat file storage system? Hard to believe. He/she/it also maintains an index?

Admittedly, in a hierarchical file system some files belong in more than one folder. That’s no problem though: hard links or symbolic links handle that situation.

quote:

Well, you did not link the article so I did not read it

Given it's the WSJ, it's probably behind a paywall.

quote:

Well, you did not link the article so I did not read it

OP probably keeps all the links on his desktop, in alphabetical order...

He could copy and paste the article if desired.