Subversion looks interesting....but I think that might be a bit overkill to start out with. I was thinking more along the lines of good practices of file naming, and documentation, etc.
My experience is that using SVN (Subversion) makes it easier to manage, easier to backup, and nothing gets lost. In SVN nothing ever gets deleted in reality. If you delete a file, it disappears, but it is still in the repository.
When you have done some work, you just right click on a parent folder and select commit. Tortoise SVN will find every new file or updated file and commit it. You can add a comment that describes your work.
The repository itself means you don't have to start at the Head. If you are working on one bit of the work, you check out that bit only.
The big thing is you do not use it the way the manuals seem to be describing.
You make as many repositories as you want - never put too much in one repository. Just think of a repository as a super zip file - it is a package. You forget about all the Trunk/Branch stuff. Just make a new empty repository, grab the start folder of a project, commit it the new repository and that's the hard work done. It is dead easy after that.
Managing repositories is super easy. SVN uses a database engine, but management is much easier then databases. You want to use an archived repository? Just copy the repository files for the archived project into the current repository location and checkout the files and folder you want.
I have my SVN linked to a WEBDAV webserver which means that every repository and every file in each repository can be access through a browser. I can view or download files.
You can come up with a system to manage files, but all such systems are always more complex then using SVN, as long as you have all the tips for using SVN correctly. With manual systems, you end up making lots of copies, so you don't wipe the old working copies. With SVN, you usually do not have to worry about keeping copies, and the other thing SVN can do is to keep all the correct versions of files together.
TortoiseSVN does transform Subversion into a wonderful program, but ultimately it is a choice. Not for everyone
Richard.