Your files are your knowledge base, so how to make important data both accessible and secure?! by Sam Miller

First, let think about some basic ideas. When you name your file, try to use long name that explain the key idea about the file. Don't name file "Doc1", use some idea specific name. Consider designing some folder structure, try to divide information into different types, consider using some standard folder structures for some certain cases. For instance, if you work with projects, then you can create a template folder structure, which will have a subfolder "people", subfolder "docs" or sub-folder "resources".
The efficiency of your knowledgebase depends on how fast you can find file you need. So, it's a good idea to use some file search engine, which will be able to help you with file searching. What one should now about files and file system to do efficient search?
Make sure you understand file masks. Actually, mask is abstraction of file name. Using mask you may tell to find a file with a certain name or find a file of certain extension (file type). Let's try to use some file masks: a*.* is necessary to find all files starting with "a". The mask *.doc will find all Word files, mask *project* will find all file, which have a word "project" in file name. Why use file mask? To speed up your search. As a result you will need to scan just few documents, not hundreds.
Some computer gurus like to keep files as a plain text, especially, some important files. It might be a good idea, as plain text files are easy to recover in a case of system crash and plain text files are very fast to search in.
When searching file, consider using additional searching parameters. If you remember file was changed last week, then apply a date and time parameter. If you know what file size was, then apply size as a filter. Don't specify exact number of bytes, just give a range for file size.
Still not satisfied with Windows search? I guess why. The latest versions of Windows provide much better such capabilities than previous, for instance, now, it's not a problem to search in archives, but still search tools built in Windows are missing some features. The most important one is preview capability. If the result of your search consist of hundred of files, then it will be hard to scan all these files, as you will need to open files one by one. Instead, find some utility that will be able to provide preview pane, to preview results without opening.
Finally, the most important problem is that some popular file formats are not searchable with Windows search. For instance, Windows will not find a text in Adobe Acrobat PDF file, also finding text in Excel document also might be a problem. If these document types are what you are using everyday, then find some search utility that support them.
I hope these simple ideas will help to improve your knowledge base. By the way, I'm sure you wish to have access to you data from anywhere in the world. Consider renting some online storage, it's a good approach to making off site backup too. Keep your data accessible and secure.