File Management Practices

I used the search tool here and saw many threads about all sorts of file management topics, mostly specific to filing videos and such. Perfectly normal for this site.

Here in the "Computer" section I saw this thrown up by a search just here:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/400162-Looking-for-a-solution-of-a-common-file-man...gement-problem

But I am looking to broaden the scope even further than that in the thread that link goes to.

Something like this link to an edu tagged site:

https://guides.lib.virginia.edu/RDM/file-management

I am looking for ideas on how any of you handle all your files on a given PC. txt, rtf, odt, mp3, mp4, everything not in the systems files that your OS designer set up as part of the original configuration that you probably don't mess with much.

I'm also wondering about ideas related to SSD/HDD/etc. files that may have accumulated over many years and is sort of mixed up. Maybe the better vocabulary is "messed up".

Any of you older folks from the U.S. or Canada remember that show, "Bewitched"? I'm sort of hoping somebody knows a not-so-expensive nose-twitching file manager that can magically get all my stuff nice and neatly packaged before my archives are sent off to the edu contracts I have for archiving my work over about 15 years or so.

Bottom line, I've pretty much lost control of my file system. Just wondering if any of y'all are facing the same trouble? Did face that, and fixed it? And such like that.

Thank you for ideas!

Alwyn, thank you for contributing some thoughts to this thread (my question) but I should apologize for not properly expressing my situation.

Your thoughts (process) seems focused on one area of archiving, but I am asking about all files/folders/archives, and maybe it would be a lot better if I used an image to better explain my situation.

Just a small section of my documents folder at present and then some contents of that last folder of that sample I did the screenshot of and might be attached. (I think I erred and am not able to embed it into the post now. But the attached is okay, I think.)

I have to start all the folders with subject titles and then the same is normally the case with the individual files inside a given folder. I think there are a few folders that allow me to use the title that starts with a timestamp, but due to the nature of all my files I can't use timestamps to start all files, as I couldn't possibly remember what I might have done on a given date.

And I have archives that go back many years and on different units --- this one being the A540 unit.

So what I am looking for is magic, of a sort. Some possible idea anyone may have as to how I could possibly arrange all my years of files/folders/archives into a possibly understandable full something; not even sure what the whole collection would be called.

Basically, what I have now is like the sands of a stretch of desert.

Of course, I could do a reorganization by hand, but that could take up to a year or two. I'm even worried, at this point, --- worried about farming out the job. I have some concerns that some of the files could be of a sensitive nature to some organizations I belong to, like the ISOC and the VFW, just to think of two at this time. In fact, I've probably got some government files stashed away on some data saving devices. So I am not so sure farming this job out is a wise idea. I likely could afford to do that, but I have concerns.

So a "magic" program of some sort may be the only answer, other than my doing it myself.

Thus I ask if any of you are magicians and can point your magic in the right direction for me to follow. Well, other than those magic words: "Don't be lazy. Do it yourself."