Here’s how I manage all my digital assets. It works well for me. Let me know if you have any questions.
Active Data
I store this data on my OneDrive. Here, I keep things I use daily and care about: projects, references, photos, documents, etc.
Root tree of my OneDrive:
- Apps: backups/exports of data from apps, like Todoist.
- Areas: files related to different areas of my life, such as home, health, employer, etc.
- Contacts: mainly WhatsApp conversations that I export and delete from the app but keep here.
- CoreDocuments: essential documents for life planning, like an Excel sheet with an annual plan.
- Pictures: my photos, organized by year or by event if there are many photos.
- Projects: supporting material for my current projects.
- References: various reference materials, like videos, books, articles, etc.
- zArchiveYYYY: a temporary folder where I move items that need to be archived. YYYY represents the current year. The “Z” keeps it at the end of the list.
Cold Archive
After the year ends, I move the zArchiveYYYY folder to an encrypted 7zip file, split into 2GB chunks to make it easier to transfer. I store three copies of this: two at home on an external drive and on a NAS; the third copy is kept on Amazon AWS S3 Glacier Archive.