I don't know if this solution exists already, but here goes...

It would be nice to have a multi-tier file system. One where a single file might exist in multiple locations within the file system. Similar to how on the Empeg, you can have songs in multiple places, but they are only pointers to the actual file.

Here is my situation. I download a lot of stuff from news. Among other things, I collect Simpsons episodes. When I download them, after checking the file to make sure it is OK, I place it in a "to be archived" directory. Periodically, I touch all my "to be archived" directories and dump to DVD. At that point, I might choose to delete the file, or place it in my "media" directory. In my media directory I have shares set up for xbmp on my xbox - so I can browse through my different shows on my xbox and watch on regular TV.

The problem here - it would be wasteful to copy a newly downloaded episode and put it in the "to be archived" dir, and also place it in the "media" directory. So, I settled on putting the "to be archived" directories in my "media" directory structure. That is annoying, because I cannot organize the shows by season.

It would be nice to have an archival directory, and also have the same file exist in my media directory. Therefore, when performing archiving functions, I can easily sort and distinguish what needs to be archived. And for media file viewing purposes, everything in the media directory is neatly organized by show and season. Under such an arrangement, there would be 2 instances/pointers of the file in the file system.

But with the capacity of hard drive ever increasing, I might just resort to the wasteful methodology. At any given time, I would be wasting a maximum of 4.7 gb.