Hi everyone! If you're stuck in quarantine like we are now in April 2020 because of the COVID19 disease, or for some other reason, now might be the perfect time to re-organize your digital file system.
About a week after I graduated, I applied for my first job, and about two weeks after that, I reported to work. During that month of inactivity, I didn't switch to a new file system, so throughout my first year of work, I was mostly creating new folders on-the-fly. This, of course, lead to a very messy file system! At some point in the middle of my second year, I just had to do something about it.
This begs the question, "what is a file system for?" Well, in its simplest form, it's to allow you to find something easily. If you have a small number of files, you don't really need one. That's why I survived for a while without one. But, as a working geoscience grad student, you'll know that we eventually end up with a ton of files, involved in many different aspects of our lives.
Before I proceed, I'd like to talk about my College file organization, just for some context, and in case there are some undergraduate students viewing this. It's quite simple, and I'm sure many of you already use something like this. Within your College folder, make a folder for each year, and within that, make a folder for each semester, and within that, a folder for each subject. Now each subject is usually different, so you'll have to figure out how to organize those. Within College you'll also want folders for any Organization you've joined, as well as any Laboratory you're a student assistant of. I usually don't like clutter, in other words files that aren't in folders. So in my College folder I also had a Miscellaneous folder for any other stuff, and a Miscellaneous References folder for any references which weren't exactly fitting for any one subject. My personal files would be in the default Music, Pictures, and Videos folders that came with Windows.
Below is a list of pointers about my file system that you can follow or tweak for your own convenience:
1. New home folder
In Windows 10, you'll notice that the default Documents folder contains system files and other folders which are usually created when you install a new program. I almost never open these files. But because new files and folders appear in the Documents folder each time I install a new program, I decided not to move them somewhere, but to instead create a new folder within it which now houses the bulk of my files. I called this folder My Documents and I created a shortcut and placed it on my Desktop.2. My folders
In my My Documents folder I moved / created the following sub-folders:
College
I just dumped everything that was related to my college files here, including the files I used to study for the Geology Licensure Board Exams, which I kept in its own separate sub-folder.
Curriculum Vitae and Resume
You will want to regularly update your CV and resume. Every time you go to a conference, every time you attend a workshop, training, or seminar. Whenever you do anything related to your career, you add it to your CV. Your resume should be a 1-2 page summary of the most relevant information about yourself. You will usually have to edit it based on what you're applying for. You should also keep a sub-folder of scanned copies of all your Certificates. Always, always, always collect your certificate, for without it, you might as well not have attended your event because you have no proof of it.
Faculty
This is basically my job folder. Everything related to my job, I place here. Every subject I teach has its own sub-folder. I have sub-folders for important documents, miscellaneous presentations I've given as a guest lecturer, documents required for promotion, an archive of student evaluations, and other projects which I was tasked to do as a faculty member of my institute (these include curriculum revision, Christmas party planning, and emergency evacuation plans).
Finances
Alright! You no longer receive an allowance, and all of a sudden the money you're spending is much more precious because you had to work for every last cent, no offense to mom and dad. So you better take care of your finances. I actually use an app to track my incomes, expenses, debts, and loans. And we'll definitely make a post about that in the future. However, if you just use a simple Excel file to record your finances, this is the folder you'll put it in. I also have files with computations of the taxes I pay, and where they go. I also store scanned copies of the bills I've paid, my SALN (Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth) submissions, my insurance policies, and any deposit slips or online transfer confirmations for large sums.
Laboratory
Here I put everything related to my lab and labmates. It's actually the same lab that I was a student assistant for when I was an undergrad. But I decided to make a whole new folder, because my responsibilities and even my labmates have changed. Here I keep checklists of things to do whenever we hold events like seminars. I also include datasets that we keep updated, things I've had to scan, publicity materials, laboratory documents, and other miscellaneous files.
Masters
This is a lot like my College folder, with the exception of keeping a separate sub-folder entitled Thesis that is parallel with the different folders for the years. The reason for this is that my thesis files aren't exactly confined to one semester or even one year, unlike when I was an undergraduate. In my Thesis folder I have sub-folders for fieldwork files (one per fieldwork) such as photos, notes, and datasets. I have sub-folders for different downloaded databases, which sometimes overlaps with those in my Lab folder, so I make shortcuts of those and paste them here. A sub-folder for my thesis proposal. A sub-folder for my manuscript, which I split into different Word files, one chapter per file. I have a sub-folder for all the rules and protocols set by my college. I also have shortcuts to my GIS folder and References folder (more on these later).
Personal
Miscellaneous files that are directly related to myself or things I find interesting. Aside from personal documents, I have ebooks, backups of my previous phones, and other projects which I've done as a sort of personal creative outlet. These include stylized maps, essays, and memes which I've made. I also have folders for online courses I took.
Research
There are three very important sub-folders in my Research folder. Conference Presentations contains further sub-folders for each conference I've attended. Each conference folder contains my abstract drafts, submitted abstracts, my presentation Powerpoint files and .pdf's, my figures, and shortcuts to my data which are in other folders. Another important sub-folder is the Projects folder. As graduate students who need money to conduct our research, we are usually involved in a project or even multiple projects. It has to be clear to you and the project leader which data belongs to you for your thesis, and which data belongs to the project. The projects may include any grants you may have applied for. Personally I've never been a Research Associate (RA), since I immediately began working as a faculty member. So my project folders aren't extremely complex. But RAs do a lot administrative work, reports, summaries, and presentations. These will all have their own sub-folders. Mine only has the reports and data that I helped the official project members with. The last important sub-folder is the References folder! Super-duper important, this is. Now, if you plan to use, or are already using, citation management software like Mendeley or Zotero, and I highly recommend that you do this sooner rather than later (we will make a post about this in the future as well), then you will want to make a sub-folder for Journal Articles. This is the folder that you will link to Mendeley so that it automatically syncs the metadata of the files within it. You will not include in this folder all of the other useful information sources you've collected that aren't exactly "citable" material. These are often saved websites, presentations, and books (very good for reference, but textbooks are rarely cited in journal articles). You don't have to sort the files in the Journal Articles folder because you can do that using Mendeley's labels and tags, which allows you to put multiple tags on a document (a tag for location, a tag for the geoscience field, and a tag for which project you used it for).
Travel Documents
The world is our laboratory! Unfortunately, going to our outdoors lab usually entails a lot of paperwork. Keep track of them in this folder. Keep a checklist for each type of fieldwork you're going to so that you know which files are necessary. Sometimes I travel as a student, and my only paperwork is my safety waiver and excuse letters; while other times I go as a field instructor, and I basically have to handle the paperwork for the entire class, coordinating with our college, university, and the local government units of the places of travel. I usually have sub-folders labelled by date, area, and purpose of travel. I also have an Archive sub-folder for all the travels I've completed and no longer have to think about. The rest are folders for travel in the foreseeable future.
Others
I made other folders named after people, for any files which relate them to me, for example, things that they asked me to download or scan, etc. A lot of this is actually junk, but I just like to keep a record of them, especially since they aren't that heavy.
3. GIS folder
I have a separate folder for GIS files, which I keep in the root folder of the storage drive. I did this because some GIS applications require you to type the location of your file, and having the GIS folder in the root folder makes it much more convenient. In it I have two kinds of sub-folders. I have sub-folders for raster and vector datasets (these are usually grouped by locations), and sub-folders for projects. I usually have shortcuts of these which I pasted in the corresponding Projects folders.
4. Shortcuts
Shortcuts are your friends. While working on a scientific paper, you will most probably be working with files in your GIS, References, and Project folders, and perhaps even your Masters and Laboratory folders. Create shortcuts of all the necessary files, and place them in your working folder for your writing.
5. Media and entertainment files
Because GIS files can get pretty big, I usually don't store a lot of media in my laptop. Instead, my media archives are in an external hard drive. When I want to watch movies or TV series, I copy and paste them into the default folders of Windows 10, then I delete them when I'm done with them.
6. Filename format
As a general rule, I usually name my files by date using the format YYYYMMDD-Subject+-location. This way they are easily sorted. Of course, they won't always work. Using this system for GIS files for example, will be very unwieldy. For GIS files I usually use the location as a filename, including what analysis I've done to it, and the projection system (e.g. SEA-SRTM_hillshade_wgs84).
7. Your desktop
You will want to avoid keeping your Desktop cluttered. A cluttered desktop is usually a sign of a disorganized file system. I remember attending a lab seminar and the RA connected her laptop to the projector and we all saw her desktop filled with clutter. From seeing her desktop alone, she received negative comments from her lab head. Don't wait for something like that to happen to you. On my Desktop I have shortcuts of the most important folders. The main My Documents folder, my Faculty (or basically my job/work) folder, and my Masters folder, although now I've switched it with my Thesis folder since I'm focusing on my thesis now. You don't really want to have much else except files that you are urgently working on. Once you are done with them, immediately transfer them to their rightful folder. If you really can't clear your Desktop, create a Desktop Clutter folder and put everything there, to at least create the illusion of a neat and tidy desktop. ;)
8. Call for backup
Lastly, you will want to back up your files. External hard disk drives are getting quite cheap. You can get up to 4TB storage solutions for a reasonable price, considering that these are long term investments. Make sure to buy from a reliable brand, because what's the point of a back-up if it's more likely to fail than your actual laptop storage? And eHDDs can be very fragile. Moving them roughly can cause the internal needle to scratch the spinning disk, permanently damaging your data and possibly rendering your eHDD useless. Reliable brands include SanDisk, Toshiba, and Western Digital. If you want extreme reliability and speed, you can opt for external solid state drives, but these are currently much more expensive. Because they don't have spinning disks, they have a very low risk of getting damaged when you jolt them around. They also offer superior read/write speeds. Take note however, that the speed of transferring files will also depend on the internal hard drive that you are reading or writing from. You can take advantage of the SSD's speed if you simply leave your files there (let's say some large raster files for your GIS analyses), and then process them while the SSD is connected. That way, the read/write speed will depend solely on the properties of your SSD. I recommend the SanDisk Extreme, because it is very compact, lightweight, and splash and dust proof, which makes is very useful and convenient for our geologic fieldworks. Another backup solution would be cloud services. I'm lucky enough to be working and studying in a university that provides us with unlimited storage with Google Drive. I use the program Backup and Sync which backs up my files in real time. I don't have to back up everything, so I only selected my My Documents, GIS, and Desktop folders. Another known and reliable cloud service is Dropbox.
Well there you have it everyone, that's my file system. We might feature other people's own filing systems if we find other good examples. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions, and feel free to give your own suggestions. Thanks everyone!
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