Organizing Files in Windows 10 (2021)

Hello, this is David again with another Windows 10 video, and this time we'll be talking about how to organize the files on your computer. Essentially, we'll be going through 3 steps, and while we do this, we'll be building your organization philosophy when it comes to files on your computer. Firstly, we'll cover the hierarchy and structure of Windows files in general so you can become familiar with kind of how the operating system itself lays things out. Secondly, we'll look at using your personal folders in your user folder to organize your files. And lastly, we'll talk about being mindful of programs' default save and install locations, because different applications and programs you install will sometimes set directories, and that can mess with your organization sometimes. So we'll talk about how to deal with those things. Uh, without further ado, let's continue this video. So first I'm going to open up File Explorer, and before I do anything else, I want you, the person watching this, to click This PC and navigate to your C drive. Your C drive will have this little hard drive icon next to a Windows logo. That's how you know that's where your install drive is. So open it up and also make sure you click View on the ribbon up here in File Explorer and make sure Hidden Items is checked. So you— I just want to make sure that you can view anything even if it was hidden. So you'll notice there's some folders here at the very bottom. This Windows folder is basically everything for operating system files. So you basically don't really have to touch this folder at all, but it's just helpful to keep in mind what goes in there. We'll cover the Users folder in a second. ProgramData is for more operating system type functions. Sometimes there's actual program data from Programs and Applications in here also. And then you'll have two Program Files folders right here. The first Program Files folder is generally for 64-bit Windows applications, and this x86 folder is for 32-bit applications. It doesn't really matter what the difference is between them for the sake of this video, but just know that if you install an application like Google Chrome or Firefox, like a web browser, or you install, I don't know, Spotify or iTunes or some kind of media player, they will reside in these folders. If you download a Windows 10 app, it actually goes into this Windows folder, but again, not super relevant. And then there you might have a few other folders like this perf logs folder, but you don't have to really worry about those. What we really want to focus in on is this Users folder where you'll be doing the majority of your organizing. So if you open up Users, you'll notice there's a few folders here. There's a hidden folder called Default, and then there's a Public folder, and then this folder which is called David, and And the reason why that's called David is because I am the user David. When I made this computer, I signed in as David, and that's why it's there. If I open this folder, this shows— I'm gonna hide the folders I don't want you to see. So here is my personal user folder. Yours will probably have your name or whatever name you used when you initially signed onto your computer to create it. So that leads me to my next point, which is this personal folder. And the hierarchy of Windows on the very top level is a Users folder, which trickles down to your user folder. Now why I think this is a good place to start off for organizing your files is that as a user, all your stuff's in one location. So if another user signs on, they'll have an entirely different folder with their name and then all their personal folders. So it just generally makes sense to do that. Now if you have multiple hard drives, I'll go back to This PC for a second. I think it makes sense to mirror this structure on other hard drives, even though your operating system isn't necessarily installed on that. So for For example, if you click Files, this is another hard drive on my computer, you'll notice that I have Program Files, Program Files (x86), Users, a very similar structure to what I have on the C drive. And that just makes things a little bit easier when things are in parallel. So if you move a directory to another hard drive, it's easily matched and you can easily figure out where things are. That's sort of an aside. For my main point. But really, I would use these personal folders. These are special folders within Windows 10 that have these little icons, and they're things like Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos. They're fairly standard since Windows XP, I would say. They're fairly recognizable. One catch to this though is that My Documents used to be the main folder for everything, I believe, since Windows XP. And then since then, they've kind of broken things out, which has been a lot better. But unfortunately, a byproduct of that is the Documents folder specifically kind of gets used as a, as an all-encompassing folder. So for example, this Overwatch folder. So Overwatch is a game, is a video game, and for some reason it has its logs and settings files in this Documents folder. So unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of control you can do when it comes to like really organizing and keeping track of your Documents folder. We'll talk a bit more about that in the last step of this video. But for now, I want to think about how you can organize your, your files here. I'll explain a bit how I organize mine. And by the way, I would say if you want a true documents folder, meaning actual documents that you have written or documents you need, like tax forms or anything like that, I would suggest using some kind of cloud storage device, because sometimes those can be more sensitive documents and you might want them backed up in more than one location. So for example, I use a Dropbox folder for all of my important documents. So Downloads is sort of a dumping ground for temporary files. So this is not a location where I keep anything here that I want to keep forever. I just kind of put things here temporarily if I download them from a web browser, and then I use them for whatever immediate purpose that I need, and then I generally delete them. So I don't know, in like a few weeks or something, I'll probably delete all the files in here. These are all temporary files. Here's an installation file for Minecraft, here's an installation file for Speccy, here's an installation file for some kind of driver, and these are all just temporary screenshots or icons I needed for the moment, so I can delete them. I would recommend keeping your Downloads folder really flexible personally and not making it a permanent location for your files by any means. And then under Music, I know a lot of people stream music more recently, but I actually save local copies of my music collection. And so I organize it by artist, and then after you open the artist, the, the album titles from there, and then the individual tracks from there. So here's an example of that. That's how I do music for myself. Another advantage of using these personal folders is that programs like Zune or iTunes will automatically use the music folder as a directory, so it kind of just helps with any kind of media application to find your collection more easily. Under pictures, I have folders like wallpaper if I want to change my desktop background to something, or I'll have my camera roll from any photographs you might take with this device. I also have, um, from Crimson and from Cyan. Those are two names of phones that I had, so any of my Smartphone photos I actually have backed up locally in my pictures folder. I have a profile pictures folder for my profile pictures for things, so it's like one spot I can always go to if I need to update a profile picture on some website. And then videos, actually I have it organized by project. So if I go to projects, you'll see there's some categories of things. I have YouTube, which is actually where I still am storing the project files for for the video that you're watching right now. So if I open up YouTube, you'll see some titles of some videos that I've made or ones that I'm working on. And so that's how I organize my videos personally. I actually use the Videos folder. So that just gives you an idea of some of the ways you can organize your files. And you don't have to follow what I do exactly, obviously. Do what works for you. I also have this Projects folder. I've repurposed a 3D Objects folder personally. I don't necessarily recommend doing that. For yourself, but it's what I've done. And if I open this up, I have a bunch of things that I'm sort of working on. And then if I open that, there's more layers and more layers, and, and I just kind of keeps everything organized. So that's how I do it. Get comfortable with these folders and figure out what works best for you. Lastly, I want to touch on this idea of being mindful of programs' default save and install locations. So I'm going to use Steam as an example, because by default, Steam wants to install games in this directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam. Now you might find that you want to use a different hard drive to save your games. For example, you might have a larger hard drive that's not a solid-state drive, or a dedicated games drive, like for example here. Notice I've mirrored the structure, so I have a Program Files (x86) folder on the root and a Steam folder to use. Now that's just a recommendation from me, you don't actually have to make them the same, but just keep in mind you can actually do things like go into settings and pick directories for some programs. Another example I want to show you is actually OBS. OBS is the program I use to make these videos. If you notice, I have a special recording path. It's under David Videos OBS Captures on my F drive. Now, that's not the default save location, but I've chosen this location very specifically. So just go into your settings and see if you can define this, and that will help you organize your files a bit better. I hope you found this video helpful in going over some organizational tactics for Windows 10. If you got some value out of it, I would appreciate a like on this video and a comment if you have something to say. And if you're not yet subscribed to the channel, please do subscribe. I plan on making many videos in 2020. So thank you very much again, and I'll see you in the next video.