Your file hierarchy for your media files.

[TheOtis]

I'm not sure where to post this as most of the forums are hardware and this doesn't have to do with a specific program.

Like many of you I'm sure, you've got thousands if not tens of thousands of files on your computer or server. Myself, I've set up a FreeNAS server. I'll keep it simple and just go into how I've got my music organized. Here's how my media section is set up- (Excuse me if this is messy haha, as I haven't typed this out before...)

-Media
-Music
-A
-Artist
-Album (If I have .FLAC and .mp3 of the same album, I have two folders here)
-Song
(I have it set up this way through Z)

I was thinking about possibly organizing them this way....

-Media
-Music
-MP3
-A
-Artist
-Album
-Song
-FLAC
-A
-Arist
-Album
-Song

That way would be easier to keep the two separate. So when it comes to putting a song on my phone, which supports FLAC or putting music on a USB flash drive for my deck, I could go to FLAC when I'm able to easily or MP3 when necessary. But at the same time, the catalog becomes fragmented.

I'm curious to know how others have their archive set up. I want to keep it basic up organized.

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

My music library is simple enough:

/Music/FLAC/<Artist>/<Album>/<xx title>.flac

I only have the FLAC header folder because I'm converting (not literally, redownloading/re-ripping/etc) all my old stuff to FLAC and I still have an old folder for stuff that I haven't found in FLAC yet. Everything that goes into the FLAC folder must be perfectly tagged, labeled, have the filenames as xx title.flac with xx being the track number, and all complete albums. It is a pain to manage sometimes but the end result is a VERY organized and clean library. The old stuff I have is a mess and that's why I don't want to mix it in, plus I want everything in lossless.

As for keeping both FLAC and mp3 copies, I prefer just to keep the FLAC on my server and convert on-the-fly whenever I'm putting it on a device that only supports mp3.

I also have /Video, /Software, /Programming, etc on my RAID-5 server to store other stuff. Since my server is shared out on the network, I have /Uploads to upload stuff into as well as a private username/password to access the RAID-5 drive's root with full permissions (mapped to Z: on all my personal computers).

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

My movie library is simple....

/movies/xxxxx/xxxxx.xxx
/movies/xxxxx/xxxxx.jpg

If I have an entire season of videos
/movies/xxxxx/xxxxxSxxExx.xxx
/movies/xxxxx/xxxxx.jpg

Have it done in that manor for the media extenders, and for easy browsing when on the ps3.

 

[Oreo]

I give up with media collection on the PC. I just play it all off my phone or ipad. I have to use itunes to sync all my media with my iphone and ipad but good old apple in there infinite wisdom make it down right difficult to organise where the media files go and how they are organized so i refuse to comply and don't use itunes for anything except when i have to sync. Unfortunately i really like the actual iTunes store on my iphone for my music and films which makes it awkward.

 

[MindoverMaster]

I have it plain and simple. A 1.5TB is dedicated to DVDs (half full atm)

All my music is in a folder named "CD Rips" A-Z alphabetical

 

[Yami]

D:\Music\Artist\Album\Song.mp3
or for my mum's music
D:\Mum Music\iTunes\that long procession of folders where iTunes stores music

E:\Movies\Movie Title\Movie.avi
or in the case of a TV show
E:\TV Show title\1x01 TV Show - Episode Name.avi
1x01 meaning series 1, episode 1. If there are more than 9 seasons in a show then it starts 01x01
If you haven't guessed, E:\ is my primary video drive.

Unfortunately i really like the actual iTunes store on my iphone for my music and films which makes it awkward.

The iTunes Store is indeed pretty good, though I find it's generally a bit expensive.

 

[Yami]

-double post, plz delete-

 

[remixedcat]

mine is whatever random mess it's currently in. I just use playlists and the media browsing stuff in media jukebox.

 

[Trotter]

All of mine is on my D: drive and completely unsorted. I have my music in its own folder with albums in folders (but some are just songs by a specific artist in a folder). I do need to re-tag my music, but I am not a purist by any means; I only want the name of the song and the artist, no album and all that other crap.

If/when I ever set up a media server I may change all that but for now that's just life.

 

[95BlackGA]

X (Music):\Artist\Album\song.***

Y (Videos):\Movies\Movie.***
:\Music Videos\Artist-Song.***

Z (Photos):\Work\Subfolders\year-month-day.***
:\Personal\YEAR\year-month-day.*** (sometimes HOLIDAY-year-month-day.***)