Organizing Embroidery Files

Yesterday I spent most of the day attempting to organize the designs for my embroidery machine.  I discovered that I have over 2500 designs and they were pretty much helter-skelter in my downloads file.  Some were still ZIP files, while others had been unzipped.  So, I created a new folder on my C drive (not under my documents) which I entitled Embroidery Designs.  Then I created a second folder which I called Embroidery ZIP files.  After this was done, I proceeded to move the designs which had been unzipped into the embroidery design folder in sub folders with them sorted according to subject.  I then used the same sub folders to move the zipped designs into the ZIP file folder.  So far so good.  But it had taken hours.  Finally I was ready to move some of the files onto my memory stick (Zip Drive). I copied and pasted the entire Embroidery Design file onto the memory stick.    I was feeling pretty proud of myself.  I had done a good thing - or so I thought.  I took the memory stick to the embroidery machine.  And that'd when I learned that the embroidery machine won't read any of the sub folders. I was so frustrated, but it was time to get dinner and so I put it aside for the evening.  This morning, I called my "How the hell can I do this" hotline (daughter Mary) and explained my dilemma.  And she told me that for her teaching files, she leaves them all on the memory stick and pulls out the ones she needs to use (or in my case, stitch) out into the main file when she needs them.  I have a baby shower this afternoon, but hopefully will get to try this out sometime over the weekend.  Hopefully what I thought had been a totally wasted day (Friday) will turn out to be a the good thing that I had wanted.