Your organization preference...

[NorthernCFF]

After decades of purchasing, collecting, and restoring videos/pictures I'm at a point where I need to re-organize my entire collection. I'm looking for input on what others have done so I don't steer down the wrong path considering I have over 15 TB of files to sort through.

Some sort of branching logic makes sense (Year > Producer > File, Producer > Year > File, etc...), but each has their shortcomings as I think about it more. For example, when I'm looking for a particular clip I may or may not recall the exact producer or year it was produced. I've also thought about certain types of matches then breaking it down from there, but you're still left with having to remember things about said files. Tagging each file makes sense, but it's a daunting task for what I have on hand.

For anyone starting out, start organizing early and stay organized throughout or you'll end up in my situation :-D

Any lessons learned from y'all is greatly appreciated!

[wrestlinhose]

I categorize on the type of contest. Example:

Is it grappling on the mat with no hitting allowed?

Is it wrestling? Trying to get your opponent to give?

Is it an aggressive catfight with slaps, hair pulling, etc?
You can chose your categories based on what you want to watch.

I separate them by types of fights because when I'm in the mood to watch a catfight or wrestling match I don't care who produced it or when it happened. I just watch what I want to watch and get to the material quickly.
Just a thought.

[Horny-Jew]

15 TB ? HOLY _HIT. You've got to be kidding ?

[jaybee]

15TB!
I thought my collection was badass with 4TB LOL!
I separate mine as follows:
_Vintage (anything mid 90's and back)
_SF (real fights such as Suitfights,Catzreview, etc.)
_APL (basically anything not "real" but classified as semi-competitive , or scripted on mats)
_Euro (Fighting Dolls, FOXY COMBAT, etc)
_WAM Wrestling (Self explanatory)

[NorthernCFF]

Thanks for the feedback y'all! Sounds like everyone has their own preference. I'm leaning towards the type of CF/match and go from there.

Yes, the 15TB spans over two decades of collecting. That's after I lost my first TB to a hard drive virus in '05/'06 -- lost some good and personal content that I'll never get back :-(. In the past ten years I've been aggressively collecting more throughout my travels and digitizing everything, then backing up those backups too (lessons learned!).

The collection also consists of a custom matches I've funded, some of which I have yet to see in the wild. They weren't anything outrageous so I'm not sure why, but each producer has their own reasoning I guess.

[LQQKING4CATFIGHTER]

  I start with producers like DWW, Festelle   then fighters that have many videos of like Antscha, Dragonlily    then types of matches   Boxing, Wrestling, Catfight    also have files with types of fighters like Blondes, Asian, Latina, BBW
   I also lost tons of matches back in the day then PC died so started backing everything up on DVD's and now have every thing on a backup drive after transfering DVD's

[suhmann]

I say this partly as a joke, but partly serious:

I have two categories of video
> Tori Sinclair videos
> Everything else

I love her fight with Christine Dupree. Where they fight at home and on the beach in the sea.