Keeping persistent data organized takes vigilance. And a system must be followed. Or you will be overwhelmed by the chaos that will reign all over your hard drives!
This is a hybrid between manual and automatic data backup.
An active folder is one that is used regularly for reference or development. It is the ONLY place the data, or the folder structure, can be modified or deleted. Active folders have a home computer location where the activity happens. For example, the home for the active folder dev is the Asus laptop. All other copies of dev on other computers or drives are for backup purposes and should never be altered directly.
A ‘temp\organizing’ folder is currently used to store older documents that have not yet been organized into the new folder hierarchy. Nothing in this folder should ever be modified in place, and nothing should ever be added to this folder. Files or folders be moved to a new location or deleted. Whenever there is a change it needs to be done in all backup copies of this folder in all locations. Use Total Commander to sync the folders. Just delete any differences regardless of which drive was changed. If it was moved out of th eorganizing folder, it was deemed as valued data and moved to a new home folder. That home folder will then be backed up when it is time to follow the procedure for managing that drive or folder.
A ‘temp\downloads’ folder is used to store downloads that will eventually be deleted.
The Asus Laptop has this top level folder structure:
__library_laptop
__programs
__temp
_business
_personal
dev
programming
The Asus laptop is the home for most of this data and content. ONLY modify this on the laptop. Then back it up on the passport external drive and then the desktop D: drive and then Drobo G:
The only data NOT at home on the laptop is the __temp/organizing folder.
Maybe I should change it to this:
__library_laptop
__library_desktop
__programs_laptop
__programs_desktop
__temp_laptop
__temp_laptop/downloads
__temp_desktop
Then there is NO confusion as to where something belongs or where it can be modified. If it exists somewhere other than its home it is a backup.
NOT so good! It creates a dilemma for duplicate content - stuff you want ONE copy of in all places.
The desktop