How To Archive on the world's best file-naming system

Veteran portrait shooter Michael Grecco (founder of HowToArchive.com, now part of the pro-storage retailer getprostorage.com) recorded this 2014 clip after losing billable hours hunting for an unlabelled master file. The solution he demos is a disciplined, camera-agnostic file- and drive-naming recipe—nothing fancy, just characters every OS can read. It’s aimed at working creatives who need to retrieve a hero frame (or RAW sequence) years later without resorting to mystery drives and panicky spreadsheets.

Tools mentioned

• Plain Finder/Explorer – all naming is done at OS level
• Metadata (EXIF/IPTC) – nice to have, but secondary to a clear filename
• Adobe DNG Converter – Grecco archives every RAW as .dng for long-term readability
• Screenshots of drive directories – saved in a single “Drive Shots” folder for quick visual lookup

Steps to follow

1. Name every file with four parts

   1. Date in reverse order: YYYYMMDD (not the yy I’d been using)
   2. Subject / Job tag: e.g. Martin_Steve or Acme_NY_Campaign.
   3. Creator initials: MGP for Michael Grecco Photography; use team-member initials when it’s not you.
   4. Camera frame number: keep the four-digit counter so each capture is unique.
   • Example: 20140504_Martin_Steve_MGP_0678.dng

2. Convert RAWs to DNG on ingest – one universal format beats a decade of orphaned vendor files.

3. Label external drives just as clearly

   • ARCHIVE_05A, ARCHIVE_05B, etc. (“05” = chronological slot, “A/B” = mirror set).
   • Never add a single drive; always add at least two so data is duplicated.

4. Photograph or screenshot every drive directory and drop those images into a master “Drive Shots” folder on your workstation—cheap, visual catalogue.

Advice

• Underscores only between words; no spaces, slashes, hashes. That keeps names readable on “98% of computers.” A YouTube commenter (OskarBravo) echoed the same tip from a Linux tech a decade ago—funny how rarely this simple rule gets taught.
• Four-part filenames beat buried metadata; you can identify a file before you open it.
• Chronological prefixes (2014-…, 2015-…) auto-sort in Finder/Explorer and in backup listings.
• Drives are cheap; lost masters are expensive—buy them in pairs and label them like assets, not afterthoughts.

Personal note: I saw this video years ago and it shaped my own convention (yymmdd_…). Re-watching today I realised Grecco’s full-year approach (yyyymmdd). But it worked for me anyways.

Watch the full system breakdown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lutNrHI_ac (2014).