content: Is there a way to categorize and groups files in Windows besides using "folders"? I had a huge crash the other day and lost gigs of data I'm a notorious backer-upper. I have at least six external drives and several thumb drives with data going back to 2003 no less. I use an mp3 player -well, I had my mp3 player charging and an external drive connected through usb ports simultaneously; I've done it many many times...  My mp3 player wouldn't disconnect via the windows "you can release the device" command and when I disconnected the external drive something ugly happened and literally all the files on the external drive were borked. 500gb of data turned into 32gb of nothing. When I click on a folder I get the "what the hell do you want me to do with this shit?" message and it is read as a .dll.  However! I managed to find a single file not in a folder and renamed it and it restored the data completely. If all my files were not in a folder I could have restored them, but since the majority were in folders,  they are toast. Recuva, or Hirens and other recovery methods do not help  so now I want to maintain files in an orderly fashion but not in folders. Is that possible?