File-Path File-managment Solution (Troubleshooting)

Chaz-Dave · Jul 22, 2016

I have amassed 10s of thousands of files over the years amounting to little shy of 400gb (pdf, word, Scans etc)

I am a neat person which is probably where the problem begins..

As much as possible I have categorized the documents and there are many many subfolders, some with long names, all in an effort to apply some logic to finding a file

Yes I have tried to shorten the paths by shortening the names
Yes I have tried to shorten the paths by eradicating subfolders
Yes I have thought about replacing names with numbers etc, but this would detract from finding a file, and the sheer amount of time needed to rename all of these files is dumb-founding

I use 'Path Too Long Utility' to help me backup to external drives of which three duplicates I always keep...

However, It's got to the point where (actually some time ago) that I can't back up properly because of the obvious problem - 'the file paths are too long'

'Path Too Long Utility' no longer copies all the files, hence all three backups have different amount of files on them - for some reason each of these three drives allows different lengths in terms of file pathways.

- YES we went to the moon - but we still can't make a system which accepts pathways [practically] longer than 260 characters-

- Ok, so, my question - Does anyone have any ideas as to how I could, in the most simply way, manage these files, keeping in mind....

1/ that my files are always increasing and that
2/ I need to be able to make several backups and that
3/ the solution takes into account that I plug and play the drives on a variety of PC's whereever I go

PS. I have read many 'old' posts on different sites to these issues separately but have never come across a simple or viable solution - I would appreciate any ideas

gbb0330 · Jul 22, 2016

there is no good way to circumvent the 256 character rule, you are very likely to run into technical difficulties if you try to do that. consider indexing and searching inside the file for keywords using the search feature, instead of manually searching by file name.

you have to work on your classification / naming system, consider using different drive letters, consider organizing by date.

i will give you an example:
keep all pdf files on drive P. create folders for each year for example P:\2016\scan\example1.pdf

Chaz-Dave · Jul 25, 2016

I tried a similar approach before but it led to confusion - there are too many files covering an incredible spectrum of areas - Also I was hoping for a solution that would exclude having prior knowledge of what is in the files so I could share my files with other colleagues.

I was thinking about a database but it would only sufficiently work if it was located on the portable drive so it could be similarly used plug 'n' play on any computer- i.e. have a structured index of all the folders and files with a browse and search facility, while having all actual files located together in one folder with no subfolders -

- I'm not sure if I did a very good of explaining that - I have searched for database-like solutions but have not come across a piece of software that could achieve that (yet), however I am far from being in-the-know about such things or aware that any such software exists

hang-the-9 · Jul 25, 2016

You need to setup a better way to organize things than just creating many subfolders. You have file names, folder names, drive letter paths, etc.. all counting towards the limit. Some things that people try to do to make things easier, actually just add unneeded complexity. Recently we had someone that partitioned their drive so much that they ran out of drive letters, it was hugely messy with partitions created for even some programs on their own. Caused a huge mess, all in the name of having things "organized". I liken it to making a nice steak dinner, then cutting up the steak into 20 parts, and serving it on 20 different plates, along with 20 more plates for the potatoes and 10 more for your carrots so each bite is on it's own plate. Sounds organized doesn't it, I mean you have one plate for each bite, no need to move food around or think about how large a bit to take. But you have 50 dishes to wash and are spending more time cutting up food and serving it than actually eating it. Not so simple and organized now right?

The Windows index for searches can easily find the names of the files, and can search inside files as well to find keywords. http://www.howtogeek.com/99406/how-to-search-for-text-inside-of-any-file-using-windows-search/

Or use Linux which has a path length of about 4,000 characters, but does have a file name limit of 255.

You can find scripts online that can help you move or copy all your files into a single directory, based on file type if you like, so you don't have to do it manually.

USAFRet · Jul 25, 2016

You're trying to put too much intelligence into the folder/subfolder/subfolder naming scheme.
Resulting in what you have now...an unusable mess.

A while ago, there was a person with the same issue (path/filename too long) for his movie collection.
Why?
2001/Action/Actor/AlPacino/blahblah/blahblah/somelongmoviename.mp4.
and
2001/Action/Director/AlPacino/blahblah/blahblah/someotherlongmoviename.mp4.

This is precisely what a 'database' is for. Categorizing the metadata.
The above should be something like:
/DBRow872/someotherlongmoviename.mp4.

In the database, row 872 holds ALL the info you'd ever need. Director, actor, actress, category, year, etc, etc.

There is no easy fix to reorganize your stuff.

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File-Path File-managment Solution (Troubleshooting)

Chaz-Dave

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hang-the-9

gbb0330

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Chaz-Dave

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hang-the-9

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USAFRet

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