SUGGESTIONS NEEDED: Graphic Designer needing to organize my graphic library

Question

Ive been wanting to find a better way of organizing my extensive library of the following (Vector & Raster art): Backgrounds, Raster/Vector Patterns, Logos, Icons, Vector Design Elements, Fonts (I use FontBook), print & web templates, Stock Photos, ALOT of vector art, anything from flourishes to multi colored complex images, Web Design stuff (icons, buttons, banners...etc.) and last but not least Adobe CS native color swatches, patterns, gradients, actions, and brushes.  I am sure I left out some, but you get the idea.
I have been building my large collection over the period of 4-5 years and has grown to 40g of internal HD space to house these in loosely catergorized subfolder (i.e., Vector Art, Stock Photos, PS plugins (gradients, brushes, ETC) backgrounds/Textures, so on and so forth.  I would love to store my Data externally but with the throughput speeds of USB, am not wanting to slow down Bridge anymore than it already is. But help with external storage and accessing files quickly would also help
As your probably thinking it is getting to be a pain to manage and even worse finding or searching for items, considering alot are generically names from packages Ive acquired (i.e. 132456.eps. flower00234.jpg, etc.)  Bridge helps alot but I am trying to catergorize and keyword folders or images this as clean as possible hopefully thru manually doing it on a system recommended or using a 3rd party software to apply metadate like keywords that will be searchable is IDEAL!
I am starting to use Lightroom 3 to manage and catalog my StockPhotos (not to many), but love the functionality of the keyword and meta data features within LR.
So that is what I am trying to accompish:
1. organize all my art in to specific catergories
2. hopefully use metadata and keywords within the OS or a 3rd party program to make items easily searchable within the Finder or Adobe Bridge.
3. Properly manage and store art as it comes to me several times a day to keep everything current so I can do a backup of just my Design files, every month or so to keep stored off computer or on the cloud.
Any suggestions(software/procedures), links, or general help on this issue is greatly appreciated!!
Thanks Again for any help lended!!! Any anyone that is willing to help me thru this and is interested in Graphic Design tools or graphics, I can definitely share ANYTHING from my collection for helping
Drew

Answer 1

Dont mind one bit, if i can pass along any advice to help someone, Im happy to do so.
first off....My art catalog is mass collections of various file types, and media uses, so I started by keywording by some of these keywords; Vector, Web Graphics, Stock Photos, Patterns (Vector/Raster), Textures, Backgrounds, Shapes/Objects (vector/Raster), and after indifiying a sorting the various files, just in folders and sub-folders, under one main Artwork Directory, and that helped me organize them for transfering between my home office, to my work server.  After that it was pretty much a breeze except for one issue I ran into (I will explain at the end).  Since I run Bridge at Work and at home, the structure and navigation to search for files by catergory was alot easier, by mimicking the same setup on both Bridge for PC at work and Bridge for Mac at home.  the last step I did to help refine things a little better, I keyworded two things within Bridge to make the search faster, and it was just these tags, Vector, Raster High Res, Raster Med-Low Res. I also use the ranking/star system to tag my most used, favorite.  1 star for frequently used, and 5 star for my favorite art packages. When I use the word "favorite", in my terms that is art that i see potential to use in future designs and good clean art that Ive never used, so I can incorporate new designs.  That might not be the best way to do it in Bridge, but after bouncing around alot of approaches this eems to work just fine for my graphic/web design needs.
One more thing that I do as I acquire new art, is make a Folder with a custome icon to stand out, that is labeled Un-Catergorized art.  And as I download art unless I use it right away, I drag and drop into that folder.  I was advised to not do this and label and file appropriately as soon as I aquire stuff so I dont get behind, but to aleviate that, I have made automator actions that move all files that have been in the folder for more than 5 days to move into a diferent folder (Delete Me), and have put an automation on that folder to delete files that are 3 days or older (in that folder).  It may sound like alot of work just to remind, but by adding another automator action in Mac OSX to email me when the first move is made, It trained my mind to process all new art every friday like clock work, and have since stop using the email action and the delete after 3 days action!  With the size of my library....getting close to 60gig....and consisting of a wide array of different media, I found this to work for my workflow.
Give this a thought, because this may help you in some way, but everyones catalog is different.
The only current problem/issue that I am trying to resolve at the moment is catergorizing and tagging (somehow) all my Creative Suite Plugins for PS, and LR.  Because it is getting pretty extensive, with patterns, actions, swatches, shapes, styles, etc...
The issue I ran into with processing VECTOR art in Bridge CS5, was the lack of support for previwing .EPS files, and took a good chunk of my vector art and converted to a native AI file to be able to view the preview in bridge, but there is work arounds I found.
Bridge has really been awesome for someone like me, and learn something new about this robust program everyday.
As far as PS & LR plugins, I could theroretically just add everything I get to their respective plugin system folder on my drive, but I move them around alot and found it easier to search my folder structure and COPY/PASTE plugins in the system folder as needed and clean out the system plugin folder every so often.
I just installed CS5.5 Master Collection last night, and even though Bridge isn't the same build as the changed DW 5.5, and indesign 5.5 (all the rest of the master collection for the most part NOTHING changed, even though its labeled as 5.1 instead of 5.0 or 5.5.  So I will be doing some research on this to see if any new features were added in Bridge but doubt it
Hope this helps! and feel free to ask anymore questions
Later, Drew