Organising My Documents?

My new PC's file structure now has the initial standard organisation:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users (86 MB)
C:\Documents and Settings\Default ( 1 MB)
C:\Documents and Settings\Terry ( 3 MB).

I'll keep running my old PC until I have installed an appropriate
selection from 6 years accumulated applications, tweaks, macros etc on
the new machine. Using my broadband router I've copied across most of
the data and setup executables I need. This is organised how I set it
up years ago, *not* in the standard fashion. For example, on the new
PC I now have temporary folders preserving the old PC structure, like
these:

C:\Docs (13 GB, my re-location of 'My Documents')
C:\Docs\Sundry (2 GB, one of scores of sub-folders)
C:\Docs\My Pictures (Virtually empty)
C:\Docs\My Music (Virtually empty)
C:\Docs\My Videos (Virtually empty)
C:\My Pictures (37 GB)
C:\My Music (12 GB)
C:\Movies (14 GB)
etc

So the question facing me now is whether to keep that structure or go
back to the MS 'standard'.

The main reason I re-organised in the first place was because I hated
all those long path names, which were usually impossible to see in
full, like
C:\Documents and Settings\Terry\My Documents\Sundry\Restaurants.txt
With my structure, it's C:\Docs\Sundry\Restaurants.txt which fits
comfortably in the title area of most folders. Also, I've never felt
comfortable with such enormously large folders. Mine are large enough,
but if they were all inside C:\Documents and Settings\Terry\My
Documents\ they would make that around 70 GB, and growing.

But there's another important advantage now. Six years in, I have
hundreds of shortcuts (and macros) that use the existing structure,
which would now have to be changed.

However, on the other side of the coin, there are some factors making
me hesitate. For a start, it's obviously easier to 'go with the
crowd'. Setting the standard approach up on the new PC would be simple
- just move the contents of each of my folders into their appropriate
equivalents inside 'My Documents'. Another problem with my
non-standard structure is that several of my applications insist on
trying to save (and open) folders that follow the MS pattern, and I
have to intervene. For example, I make DVDs, and some of my video
editors and burning programs have a fixation on 'My Videos', whereas
all my stuff is in C:\Movies.

So, faced with those pros and cons (and probably some I've missed),
I'd greatly welcome other experienced users' views please.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK
.

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