Yipes! Taking digital pictures and then storing them on desktop folders is like trying to play 8 track tapes on your Ipod - don't do it!
I use a program called Memory Manager. It automatically sorts by date and allows me to cross-tag photos for multiple locations while preserving ONE COPY on my hard-drive for fast retrieval. So all my Christmas pictures, for example, are in ONE FOLDER (but sorted and searchable by month or year) and all are also tagged by person. This means I can find all pictures with my two daughter from any Christmas in about 30 seconds. This program also makes an automatic shadow copy on an external hard drive for painless back-ups and has lots of other snazzy features. It's only $40 and includes free upgrades whever there are any. GO here for more info:
http://tinyurl.com/4ytpx9