Organizing multiple hard drives.

Years of bad storage habits rarely include “quickly” in the same solution sentence. The following is an ad hoc outline to tackling the multiple external drives with disorganized mystery content. It is not sourced from a corporate IT regimen that may have had years of input to formulate. The goal is to reshape your present and future thoughts about storage management and ultimately spare you time.

There is no magic application with artificial intelligence that can make sense of your filing and naming conventions and generate a report, or move your files around. Like any worthwhile project, this will take some time on your behalf.

1. Inventory external drives
   1. USB
   2. USB Stick
   3. FIrewire
   4. SDHC card
   5. Spare drives
   6. Other formats, including Windows NTFS
2. Review individual drives
   1. Map individual drive contents
      1. Folder hierarchy
      2. File types
         1. Applications currently available to open these files?
         2. Conversion path for files whose names suggest importance?
      3. Folder/File naming patterns
      4. Storage consumed
   2. File contents
      1. Relevant or delete?
      2. Document security necessary?
   3. Create content manifest for each drive
   4. Drive labels with legible content summary and date range
3. Create a storage policy
   1. How much storage/drives will it take to consolidate and organize current storage mess?
   2. And, allow for future growth.
   3. Should there be a backup policy, even for the external drive data?
   4. Folder categories
      1. Each folder contains a text document (_INDEX.txt) that outlines folder contents. This file will be first in the folder due to collating sequence.
      2. Laugh now. In one year, you won't remember what is in here, or why, without this document.
      3. Limit number of folders and sub-folders with short, functionally descriptive names.
   5. Simple, at a glance, short file naming convention
      1. No filenames as sentences. VMS is dead.
      2. Filenames with extensions.
      3. No illegal characters or spaces in the filenames.
   6. Retention period
      1. What is the realistic life of this data?
      2. When and how to dispose?
      3. Mark folders/files to remove in Red.
   7. Next drive consolidation period
   8. Drive security
      1. Onsite fireproof safe
      2. Offsite safe deposit box
      3. Locked drawer
      4. Stacked in a corner gathering dust
      5. Drink coasters, etc.
   9. Document security
4. Simple password protect
5. Encrypt
6. Designated folder category or color (yellow) for secure content
7. Consolidate external drives
   1. Pass 1
      1. Remove what you absolutely know is outdated and no longer needed.
      2. Folders with unsupported document types should be blue implying potential conversion
   2. Pass 2
      1. Folders that can be further consolidated on the same external drive - do this now.
      2. Drag and drop external drive contents to fresh drive
         1. Follow storage policy conventions
         2. Further consolidate where sensible.
   3. Pass 3
      1. Secure new consolidation drive(s)
      2. Decision to recycle previous external drives
      3. Clone new consolidation drive(s) for additional backup.
   4. Pass 4

      File conversions where possible

8. Create a consistent back-up policy
   1. Time Machine
   2. Carbon Copy Cloner
   3. Both
   4. Other