[Nancy]

I work for a print shop, we have tone of files, The ones that I always work on stay on my hard drive, the old files will be burned onto a cd, does anyone have suggetions for naming files, how to organize them. by company, by date, do I give each company their own CD? or group companies alphabetically?
I'm so confused :-(

 

[Betty Fooz]

with the price of cd-rws nowadays i would just keep each company on a separate cd. or buy a huge external hd.

 

[avalonian]

There are disk tracking utilities out there that you can use to keep track of the info on your CD's, zips, etc.

i use DiskTracker, which takes seconds to catalogue a CD- www .disktracker.com

There are others. More for OS 9 and below than for X, I think. It is crucial to know what CD has what on it without having to insert each and every one! Number your CD's, too.

As for a filing system, I use labels (where did labels go in OS X -- oh my; chagrin) and custom icons (there are utilities that change these easily) to create both visual windows and a coherent hierarchy. Go for hierarchy over visuals -- keep your naming conventions straight for all jobs, i.e. chose pictures, pics, images or Photos -- stick with one and don't change it.

Try and name your files in a manner relevant to the folder structure it is in so that you have some idea of where it might go if it gets moved (or so you can spot out of place items).

Use aliases!

I use Toast to burn CDs. Burn ISO 9660 disks. Select resolve aliases so that aliases point to files on the CD instead of on your Hard Drive. ISO 9660 allows you to reimport sessions if you need to add or remove (!) later on. You are basically overruling the disk directory, so you can add new files, remove (it only hides) them, reorganize and rename previously burned files and burn a new session that doesn't result in an extra volume being mounted or the reburning of all the files already ON the disk.

 

[JAMG]

I would recommend Grouping your Major clients by Company name and burn Cd as such...

Name the CDs something like "Company Name 001" "Company Name 002" "Company Name 003", so that your CD tracking software will list them Alphbetically and be able to search and efdfectively retrieve files... Use 3 digits since you can quickly get to 100 cds for your biggest clients {Lets hope, eh...}

Build one group for Miscilenious Clients, You will always have small accounts or Spec stuff that will never fill a CD on their own.

We name individual Jobs by Docket # and Job Title, since the CDs are already sorted by Client name, you don't need to put the clients name in the folder name.