Ask HN: How to organize personal knowledge?
Agree to wenc.
If you try a hierarchical organization (you could use the same classification as in official libraries for example) then you won't find what you want easily.
The best solution is NOT to sort too much, and use a (free) global tool to find what you search.
If you're under windows, then "everything" of voidtools.com should help. (This program is realtime, it's amazing.)<p>if you're using any Unix flavor, activate "locate" and use it.
Both do an index of the filenames. So naming correctly your files is important. The 8.3 schema is over now ;)<p>On a WinPC I also use TotalCommander (of ghisler.com) to make an advanced search (filename and/or content).
Of course, find&grep under Unixes do that well!<p>I got more than 40Gb of ebooks, pdfs, videos, podcasts, etc. in 4 languages (French, English, German, Spanish) and the sole way to find out quickly is global searching.<p>And constant reorganizing. (With no tool to update, it's a breeze ;))<p>If you prefer a hierarchical way, then using aliases (symbolic links, on unixes, but since Win7 you can also create links under windoze) can be an alternative to have multiple entries of the same files in your "database" of filenames, making possible to have "NoSQL for dummies" in "RDBMS" as well as "BigData" and "books for beginners" categories.<p>P.S. I work on documentation systems since 1984.
Full text indexing is probably the best solution.<p>Madmarsu