Organizing your Files
Why Bother?
By organizing the files on your Mac's hard drive, you enable yourself to find, share and backup your data in a timely and safe manner. Over the years that I have been working with Macintoshes I have seen some tragic examples of file organization that, in some cases, has resulted in data loss and frustration.
Do's and Don't's
DO
- Separate your Applications from your Documents
- Organize your Documents
- Make aliases of your key files and Applications
- Backup files that are unique to your Mac
- Keep track of where you are saving your documents
DON'T
- Store your documents in the same folder as the application that created it
- Store all of your files on the "root" level of your hard drive
- Backup files that exist in other places
- Backup Applications (unless they are unique)
- Save your documents "wherever" and then go back and move them later (you'll forget)
Example
The root (or top) level of my hard drive looks like:
- Apple Extras - [Stuff from Apple Computer]
- Applications - [Applications - each has it's own sub-folder]
- Documents - [*All* of my Documents are here, catagorized]
- Help Documents
- ECS docs
- FrameMaker
- GIFs
- HTML Docs
- Images
- InterNet Docs
- jjh
- Letters
- MacDude's
- MacIS docs
- Web Art
- Fonts - [Some fonts that I don't currently use, but want to keep around]
- Incoming! - [Files that I have sent to me, or that I download from the Net]
- jjh's Power to the Public! - [My Public folder. (Don't name your's "Public". Let people know it's yours!)]
- System Folder - [Keep this at the top level, don't hide it.]
- Utilities - [This folder contains aliases of a bunch of Utilities and another folder that contains the Utilites themselves.]
jjh@macdude.com
Last Modified -
Feb-11-1997