Digi Scrappers-- how do you store and sort your stash?

[labdogs42]

Now that I am accumulating digital kits at an alarming rate, I need to know how everyone stores, sorts, and backs up their digital stash. So far, I have been keeping mine on my laptop, but I fear that I will run out of space there sooner than later. I have two desktop computers and an external hard drive I can store stuff on. How do I go about this? Then how do I sort it all? What do you do? If I store things on an external drive, can I keep thumbnails on the computer to see what I have or something? How does that work? Ideas, please!

BTW, I have Picasea now and I'm getting PSE 5.0. I'm thinking of getting ACDSee, too, if I need it!

 

[Fran98765]

I file everything by designer and at large stores I keep those together. For me it's easier this way to do credits, and if a store site requires you to use their products in a challenge, they are easier to find. I am also on many CTs, and you use 1 kit exclusively on those LOs, so it works best for me to keep kits together. My file system looks something like this:

0-My Work (my completed layouts, in many diff dir's to separate)
3Scrapateers
.Designer A
..Kit A
..Kit B
.Designer B
Site
Site
Site
Scrap Matters
.Britt-ish Designs
..Dreams Do Come True
..Shiver Me Timbers

and so forth. There are many (MANY) designers that sell at more then one store. If I'm less familiar with the designer, I may find that I have folders for her in several different store folders! Otherwise, I keep all her stuff under one store's directory, so she's all together. I usually put her in where either she is most active, or where I do challenges most often. After awhile you will "know" more designers and remember where you put them.

 

[ngneer98]

I'm not on any CTs, so I don't need to sort by site/store. I just have one gigantic folder on my hard drive called "themed kits", and in that folder every kit i've purchased or downloaded has its own folder with all the papers/embellishments/etc inside. I always make sure to keep either the TOU or the 'thank you' file from the designer in the folder so I can give proper credit when I need to (I didn't do that at first, so a lot of my older kits are by 'unknown designers' (oops). for 'odds and ends' freebies i've downloaded, I've also got folders for papers (sorted by colors), templates (subdivided by # of photos in the template), alphas, wordart, and embellishments (subdivided into ribbon/buttons/tags, and i can't remember what else!). The only exceptions to this system is I have a couple of really big folders for "christmas-themed" stuff, easter, and halloween, since those kinds of kits usually blend together anyways. Oh yeah, DUH....I have a big honkin' Disney folder too!

With the way mine's set up, I can see some of the contents of each folder on the thumbnail folder preview, so I can get an 'idea' of the color scheme of the kit in the folder just with a glance (the one good thing about Vista perhaps?), if the name of the kit doesn't jog my memory. I have a brand new Dell laptop, so my harddrive is nowhere near full.......but when it does get there, I have an external I'll start using. I already use it every once in awhile to back up everything.....just in case! With my old laptop, I had to use the external constantly to access the kits 'cuz there wasn't room on the harddrive for all the stuff i had. Once you plug in the external, your laptop recognizes it just as if it were your harddrive, so it's no big deal to access it. I do a lot of scrapping in our car (we visit family 2 1/2 hrs away just about every weekend), so messing with the external all the time got annoying, hence the new laptop!

So that's how I organize all MY stuff.....my digital stuff is way more organized than my paper stuff ever was!!! I never could find stuff when I'd be paper scrapping....I'd know I'd have something....SOMEWHERE, ya know?

good luck!
diana

 

[dznyscrapper]

I have my kits labeled by the kit name and then the designer. For the random freebies I have a folder for embellies and paper. I also have folders for Christmas, winter and any other theme I have a lot of random freebies for.

For each folder I have the preview of the kit as the only picture showing. To do this you need to rename the preview picture "folder". This will then become the icon for that folder. It took me a little while to go through all my kits when I first heard the tip but it is well worth it. For the kits that don't have previews in them, I just saved the picture of it off of the site that I downloaded it from and made it my "folder" file.

Amanda

 

[wenrob]

I have a folder called Digi Scrapping and in that I have kits by designer. Also in there are an 'finished folder' for my LO's, alpha folder, frames folder and an element folder for random stuff I've picked up. I have all my previews set to 'folder' so I can see what's in them quickly. I keep a copy of everything on my EHD and older stuff there, newer stuff on my laptop. I also periodically burn stuff to DVD because I'm anal like that. Plus I've heard horror stories of people losing everything.
Disney stuff aka ALL of Britt's stuff has it's very own folder. I don't have folders by shop because I credit by designer. I'm the only person on the planet who's not on a CT.

 

[labdogs42]

I'm the only person on the planet who's not on a CT.

I'm not on one either, so that makes two of us!

I pretty much have my stuff organized like you. Of course, Britt has to have her own top-level folder! I think I have one for Ellie lash now, too. I downloaded the trial of ACDSee and it seems like a pretty cool way to organize stuff. I haven't decided if I NEED it yet or not!