prelaps · VFilemanage

The common misconception

Gathering files into one place makes them feel safe. Everything is visible on one screen, names and thumbnails render properly, and a double-click opens them. So the thought becomes "it is organized, therefore it is fine."

But every approach covered in organizing files without moving them — shortcuts, libraries, and this program — only ever remembers where the original lives. There is no copy of the file anywhere. When the original goes, all that is left in the list is a name.

What actually happens

Three cases are common.

• You deleted the original — the organizer does not react at all. The entry stays in the list, and you find out when you try to open it and get "original not found." The recycle bin may already be empty by then.
• You unplugged a drive — everything on that external disk or USB stick stops opening at once. This one comes back when you plug it in, so it is not worth panicking over.
• You moved or renamed the original — the same symptom. The file is perfectly fine; only the link is broken.

The problem is that the third and the first look identical on screen. "Not found" does not tell you whether something was moved or destroyed, and the organizer has no way to distinguish them, because it never held the file in the first place.

Sync is not a backup either

It is easy to assume OneDrive or Dropbox has it covered, but sync syncs deletions too. Delete on one machine and it disappears on the others, and that is correct behaviour, not a bug.

Overwrites work the same way. Save a bad version over your work and that bad version propagates everywhere. Most services keep a trash or version history for around thirty days, but noticing can genuinely take longer than thirty days.

What sync protects against is exactly one scenario: this machine dying. Human error and malware travel right along with it.

What a backup looks like

The widely used rule of thumb is 3-2-1. It was built to be memorable, so just use it as written.

• Three copies — including the original. Lose one and two remain.
• Two kinds of media — an internal disk and an external drive, for instance. Another folder on the same disk is not a second copy.
• One off-site — somewhere outside the building, cloud or a drive at the office. Fire and theft take everything in the same room.

Keeping all of that as an individual is a chore, but satisfying just "is there a copy on a different physical device?" already covers most of what goes wrong.

So what is an organizer for?

An organizer solves the time it takes to find things. That is all it does, and that is plenty.

Pulling a file from one screen instead of digging through folders every time, keeping the same file under several topics without using extra disk, grouping things your way without disturbing the original folder structure. A backup cannot do any of that for you.

The reverse holds as well: a backup does not organize. Having every file safely on a backup drive is little comfort if finding the one you need takes half an hour.

Running both together

Once you know the structure, combining them is straightforward.

• Point your backup at the original folders, not at what the organizer displays. Organizing never moves files, so the originals are exactly where they always were.
• Back up the organization itself. In VFilemanage it all lives in one file, filetree.db, under %APPDATA%\VFilemanage. Back up the files but skip that folder and you will have to rebuild the whole arrangement after a restore. The hours you spent organizing are in there.
• Keep important originals somewhere stable. Organize things that are sitting in a temp or downloads folder and the links break the moment you tidy that folder out.

When you do need to move originals

Sooner or later you will move originals that are already organized, whether swapping drives or restructuring folders. Keep the order and it is safe.

1. Run a backup before moving anything. Skip this and the rest does not matter.
2. Move the originals.
3. Relink the entries reporting "original not found" to their new locations.

A changed drive letter, D becoming E, is the most common version of this. The files are untouched and only the path differs, so relinking is all it takes.

In one line

An organizer remembers where things are; a backup holds copies of them. With only the former, losing an original leaves you with a name. The better organized everything is, the easier it is to mistake that for safety, so run the backup separately.

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