Is Libraries Useful; a Debilitating Crutch--Or Both?

While it seems Libraries can be helpful for finding user data that may not all be neatly stored in one or several logical and easily found places; it also seems to me it would be better for a user to get their data organized and clearly know where it is, rather than let it be scattered hither and thither across various folders and drives, and rely on Libraries to find it all when desired.


Therefore, while Libraries can obviously be useful to help find misplaced, poorly placed, or oddly placed data; might it not be better to avoid using Libraries as much as possible; and get used to using folders directly--to develop and maintain an understanding of exactly where all your data is being stored. Besides a general feeling of competency and control this would engender, this knowledge could facilitate doing comprehensive back-ups that don't inadvertently miss any data.

Hi there
IMO a better facility to use these days is "Spanned Volumes" -- although remember if one volume in the "Spanned set" fails you lose the whole thing -- but provided your backup is fine then this really shouldn't be an issue.

The reason particularly why like spanned volumes is that I have several very large multi-media files - for instance I have about 4TB of music (I like loads of classical music at the best quality available --Uncompressed FLAC) and I can have all the music say in a high level directory "MUSIC" then split down into sub directories etc.

I might have 4 physical disks "Spanned" -- which gives me say my 5 - 6 TB "volume size".

So say I have volumes D,E,F,G defined as Spanned.
Windows explorer will show this as a single volume "D" with 5 - 6 TB total size.

Then you just use this volume as a single big volume. Backing up sub directories regularly will ensure you don't lose anything.

Another thing to consider is that a lot of multi-media type programs where you can organise your photos / music etc
often use some type of data base / folder system which don't allow multiple volumes. By using Spanned volumes the application just thinks your directory is on a single disk.

(I think W8 has a better system of "Pooled Storage" which is an improvement on Spanned volumes but spanning certainly works on W7).

Libraries have some problem with automatic updates / re-organisation. Spanned volumes work EXACTLY like Windows explorer does and your directories are always up to date.

To use spanned volumes - change to DYNAMIC Disks then select the disks to Span together. Can't show you an image at the moment as I'm using a laptop currently with a single internal HHD (SSD actually).

Cheers
jimbo

I use libraries extensively - with the default view as Folder so I see the underlying folder structure. The reason I use libraries is because my folder structure is organised in a way that results in the scattering of files across disparate drives/partitions.

They also allow me to consolidate my cloud storage - a library that contains the local synchronised file stores for several services, (Skydrive, Google Drive, Flicker, Etc.), are all visible in one place.

Ditto

My ONLY experience with Libraries is as follows:

I created a library from a collection of video files on a USB external drive. When I incidentally caused the loss of the MasterFileTable on the external drive, I could only recover generic files (without filenames and such). When I managed to visit Libraries and found intact the library created, I was glad for the recovery and puzzled! I thought these were links instead of actual digital data occupying the primary hard drive space. I've stayed away from Libraries ever since.