Hi Simon,
Your post blew my mind a bit, but I vaguely understand where your coming from.
It’s made me realise that this clean up of work is more then just a couple days work!
When I say Master, I mean final export of delivered video; MP4, Quicktime etc.
The server mainly consists of all these Master Files and sporadic rushes.
Rushes are primarily kept on their original hard drive (which I’ve taken the time to number and draw up a quick table containing the name of the project alongside which number hard drive it’s on), rushes are then backed up further to a 4TB hard drive.
I don’t see any issue implementing the system on forthcoming projects it’s only on previous projects that haven’t been managed by me and are a complete mess.