How do you organize your Anime files?

[OniSamurai]

I'm just wondering, being the organized neat freak that I am when it comes to, well everything, how do all you guys organize your Anime downloads? I'm currently trying to figure out the best way to neatly organize them, but can't decide on a way to achieve this without having multiple folders for each and every series.

Here's an example:
Death Note
Ergo Proxy
One Outs

Thats just a random 3 that I picked out. Now, in my list of many Anime they are named as such:
[TSR]_Death_Note_01-37.DVD[H264,Vorbis](Complete)
[A-Kraze]_Ergo_Proxy_hdtv
[B2E]_One_Outs_[X.264]

Original files names. Not bad looking, but when you are trying to search through many different series on say, a 1TB external hard drive, it can be pretty annoying to fish through them all to find the one you want.

So there are several options. I could rename the original file of say
[TSR]_Death_Note_01-37.DVD[H264,Vorbis](Complete)
to be just
Death Note
but then I wouldn't know what version it was without looking at the actual files. I could also do:
Death Note[TSR][DVD][H264,Vorbis]
which makes it look at bit more organized, cause then I can have them listed alphabetically and still have all the info I want. But then what about when it comes to OVAs and such? Do I really want it to say:
Pokemon Season 1
Pokemon Season 2
Pokemon Season 3
Pokemon Movie 1
Pokemon Movie 2
etc...

And so on. So I could just put it in its own folder, but then its like an endless amount of clicks just to get to the show I want...

Anyways, I know I probably sound completely anal about all of this. I'm just wondering how you fine people going about organizing your wonderful torrent downloads.

[1000mAh]

meh use simple:
first there is folder called ''Anime''
then in that folder has all the names of anime example:
full metal panic!
if that serie has more seasons, that are with diffrent season, in that folder, there will be other folders like this:

(click to show/hide)

                                   Full Metal Panic!                -> Full Metal Panic! - 01 - The Guy I Kinda  Like is a Sergeant
Anime->Full Metal Panic->Full Metal Panic? ~Fumoffu~
                                   Full Metal Panic! TSR

thats basicly it thats how I organice my anime files.

[Chiyachan]

>_>
I have mine organised as shown in image:

[Tiffanys]

Series Name [possible additional things] \ seasons

Always like that. I make sure the series name is always first, that way i can start typing it to get to it instead of having to look through a sea of brackets trying to find what I'm looking for (oh, the horror...).

[Sosseres]

Kinda like that, four folders spread over four drives where I just set my client to download to whichever has the most space at the time of changing. Then I search my torrent client for the files, use windows search or download a duplicate. I don't really care about sorting or keeping files after I watch them. I also tend to have >100 episodes in my media player as an additional layer of sorting.

[shabutie]

I use folders.  3 big ones for Anime, Movies, and TV.

Inside of those are folders to the series/movie and inside those are the files.

Usually what I do when I download the torrent file into uTorrent, is I'll rename the path right away so I don't have to worry about it later and download it straight to its folder

(click to show/hide)

[Jarudin]

I threw away a lot of stuff .. I'm collecting again now after swapping some disks for new (bigger) ones.

(click to show/hide)

I don't use 'folders', I use 'disks'

--Jarudin--

[Blanchimont]

If you have your anime collection spread on a lot of drives, use this to make a textfile of contents for each, then tag the beginning of each .txt with some kind of 'anchor' tag (for example, the name of the drive, followed for example by ###... etc to make finding of each section with ctrl+f easy (see=>v), and then join them all into one big textfile by way of copypaste.

Now, next time you need to search for something like 'Death Note', just open the big textfile and use ctrl+f and the searchterm (Death Note), and it will list every single instance of your anime collection with 'Death Note' in name regardless of naming convention.
And the 'anchor' tag? Well, do ctrl+f again and use '####' as searchterm and it will make finding the right section (corresponding to a drive) easier.

[OniSamurai]

Ah, I think I found a winner. I like having the fansub name visible like yours Jarudin. Those numbers on the end, I'm assuming they are the number of episodes in each folder?

EDIT: Thanks for the suggestion Blanchimont. I was in the proccess of making a .txt file before making this thread. This will save a lot of time.

[pipitugaboy]

Maps with seasons.
Example



Anime - One Piece - Movies
                         - Series - East Blue saga - Morgen Arc
                                                           - Buggy arc
                                                           - Etc....
                                    - Barogue Works Saga - Laboon Arc
                                                                  - Etc....
         - Toradora!
         - Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood
         - Mobile gundam suit 00 - Season 1
                                          - Season 2

And so on...Quite organised imo =P
But all in all most of my anime is on my External HDD organised and all...

[1000mAh]

Maps with seasons.
Example



Anime - One Piece - Movies
                         - Series - East Blue saga - Morgen Arc
                                                           - Buggy arc
                                                           - Etc....
                                    - Barogue Works Saga - Laboon Arc
                                                                  - Etc....
         - Toradora!
         - Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood
         - Mobile gundam suit 00 - Season 1
                                          - Season 2

And so on...Quite organised imo =P
But all in all most of my anime is on my External HDD organised and all...

    v              only small difrence with my style            v

meh use simple:
first there is folder called ''Anime''
then in that folder has all the names of anime example:
full metal panic!
if that serie has more seasons, that are with diffrent season, in that folder, there will be other folders like this:

(click to show/hide)

                                   Full Metal Panic!                -> Full Metal Panic! - 01 - The Guy I Kinda  Like is a Sergeant
Anime->Full Metal Panic->Full Metal Panic? ~Fumoffu~
                                   Full Metal Panic! TSR

thats basicly it thats how I organice my anime files.

[halfelite]

I have my structure split. like this I have a mix right now of series titles. Some are just like One_Piece and others are [group_name]Series_name

-Anime
--A-M
--N-Z
---One_Piece
----OVA
-----File_name.avi
----Season-1
-----File_name.avi
--Movies
---Hows.Moving.castle
----File_name.mkv

[pipitugaboy]

    v              only small difrence with my style            v

meh use simple:
first there is folder called ''Anime''
then in that folder has all the names of anime example:
full metal panic!
if that serie has more seasons, that are with diffrent season, in that folder, there will be other folders like this:

(click to show/hide)

                                   Full Metal Panic!                -> Full Metal Panic! - 01 - The Guy I Kinda  Like is a Sergeant
Anime->Full Metal Panic->Full Metal Panic? ~Fumoffu~
                                   Full Metal Panic! TSR

thats basicly it thats how I organice my anime files.

I don't see the difference =P
It's exact the same as mine xD
Or u mean that I do the Arcs as well and you not?
It's only with One Piece that XD

[1000mAh]

    v              only small difrence with my style            v

meh use simple:
first there is folder called ''Anime''
then in that folder has all the names of anime example:
full metal panic!
if that serie has more seasons, that are with diffrent season, in that folder, there will be other folders like this:

(click to show/hide)

                                   Full Metal Panic!                -> Full Metal Panic! - 01 - The Guy I Kinda  Like is a Sergeant
Anime->Full Metal Panic->Full Metal Panic? ~Fumoffu~
                                   Full Metal Panic! TSR

thats basicly it thats how I organice my anime files.

I don't see the difference =P
It's exact the same as mine xD
Or u mean that I do the Arcs as well and you not?
It's only with One Piece that XD

well it is the easyest way

[Xiong Chiamiov]

meh use simple:
first there is folder called ''Anime''
then in that folder has all the names of anime example:
full metal panic!
if that serie has more seasons, that are with diffrent season, in that folder, there will be other folders like this:

(click to show/hide)

                                   Full Metal Panic!                -> Full Metal Panic! - 01 - The Guy I Kinda  Like is a Sergeant
Anime->Full Metal Panic->Full Metal Panic? ~Fumoffu~
                                   Full Metal Panic! TSR

Basically this.

I have a "leeching" folder where things go automatically when I download them.  Upon completion, I move them into "anime", and then create the appropriate symlinks into "anime-symlinks", which allows me to have a nice-looking folder while still retaining original directory names.  Then I simply have to start typing the name of something to get to it.  The fact that I use an LVM means that the OS thinks everything is on one disk, which is convienent.

I don't keep multiple versions of a show around, so I don't keep the release group or source information in the directory titles.  Filenames stay however they came.

[Akecu]

>_>
I have mine organised as shown in image:

+1 to Chiya's organization style. ^^

[Mag-X]

I move the fansub group's name to the end of file/folder names, and then shove everything into a folder called Video. Everything goes in there, not just anime. The only thing special is that all porn goes into a folder called "This Folder Has Porn In It"

[OniSamurai]

I have it now where all my Anime is in my Anime folder. And the files are listed as such:
Agent Aika [a4e]
AIKa R-16 Virgin Mission [a4e]
AIKa ZERO [Seto Otaku]
etc...

Thanks for all the suggestions. Now my drives and folders look very neatly organized and pretty. ^_^

[Reape]

Alphabetical subfolders.

[Arc-sama]

My folders basically goes like this ... NOTE: there are slight variations to the format for some series ...

Series Name [audio] [video info] [group] file type (exp. AVI)

EX#1: AD Police [Dual Audio] [DivX5] [a4e] OGM

EX#2: Element Hunters [DB]

--OR--

Series Name
         Season# / Season Name / Episode#s / OVA / Movie [audio] [video info] [group] file type

Ex#3: Bakuretsu Hunters ~ Sorcerer Hunters
                   01-26 [Dual Audio] [Anime-Takeover] OGM
                   OAV 01-03 [Dual Audio] [Anime-Takeover] OGM

Ex#4: Saiyuki
                01-50 [Dual Audio] [Exiled-Destiny] MKV
                3-- Reload [Ani-Kraze]
                4-- Reload Gunlock [Ani-Kraze]
                5-- Reload Burial OVA WMV & AVI
                Various Episodes


File are renamed with just the series name & episode numbers ... some times it will have the video info and/or sub group for a couple of reason ...

• information could not fit in the folder name
• file(s) had different specs/sub group from the rest of the files in the folder