(File-)System for versioning and organizing

I'm searching for a solution to organize photos, documents, audio, video, ... in a way so that each file only exists once on a hard drive, BUT being able to organize it into multiple folders/playlists/albums (I look at those as the same thing).

When doing backups, I'd like to have a way for the backup system to find out when a file was moved in my folder structure, so it doesn't create new copies of that file.

If a file actually changes, it would be good to not override the actual file (and hence all the other related "files" in other folder locations) , but create a new file then.

I think some clouds offer this kind of storage, but I want to have it locally on only 1 PC. I'd be ok with a small service or driver running, that abstracts this behaviour for me, as long as things stay small and simple.

I'd like to be still able to use any application on those files (like music players, image viewers). Editing files (like photos) should still be possible, as long as a new file is created instead of overriding the original.

As I regard these functionalities as quite basic (this is a usual requirement for a lot of users, isn't it?), I was wondering if there is a mechanism like this already in a default OS installation.

I thought of hardlinks, BUT ... There is no mechanism that prevents me from accidentally overriding an actual file (in all folders instead of only that one file). When editing a text file for example, the texteditor promts me with an administrator dialog on saving. Inodes are only unique within the filesystem the file lies in (which is bad for that backup functionality). Most software I use does not support creation of hardlinks - and certainly not in that specific way. There is an abstraction layer needed. The software would also need to automatically set file permissions so it is read only (so a new version has to be created on each save).

Another idea is to create a virtual filesystem (VFS) as a wrapper. But I don't know how difficult and timeconsuming that would be.