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Collection size
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DVD Profiler Unlimited Registrantsmeehrrr
Registered: March 26, 2007
Posts: 196
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Quoting mediadogg:
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Impressive total. It would be helpful to know how many discs that represents, to help others estimate. I have been using 6GB per disc, and thereby would estimate your collection to contain about 3500 discs? How close is that? Oops, check that. That's 6GB x DVD discs + (???) GB x (BD or HD) ...

What is a good average for the amount of space to store a BD or HD?

It's 2001 DVDs and a whopping 4 blu-rays, but I'm way behind in my ripping and there are a couple of terabytes still free in the array.  Using 6GB as an average for a DVD works pretty well, so at $.20/GB you're spending about an extra $1.20/DVD on average to not have to get off the couch, search through a shelf of DVDs, and then walk (*gasp*) over to the DVD player to put the disc in.  Plus some fixed costs for the servers and the electricity to keep them running.
DVD Profiler Unlimited Registrantsmeehrrr
Registered: March 26, 2007
Posts: 196
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Quoting mediadogg:
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Edit: Some interesting numbers: You can now buy 500GB SATA drives for $80 (TigerDirect.com). That means it would cost about $3200 for the drives alone to store 20TB. But the 1900 titles probably cost over $20,000, so ...

Yeah, if you amortize it over the number of discs in your collection it doesn't seem quite as bad.  There are some other advantages, too:
1) Don't need to keep all the keepcases.  Any standard case I strip the inserts out of and throw away the keepcase.  The "special" cases go into storage and don't take up any space in my house.
2) You can't scratch the disc.  It gets played once, then goes into a binder where it stays forever, unless a catastrophic machine failure happens.
3) You can play the discs anywhere in the house if you have a network.  I have a PC hooked up to each TV in the house, plus I can play them on any computer including the laptop.
4) Much easier searching.  My front end lets me search by title, by actor, by genre, or by purchase date. Makes it pretty easy to find something that I want to watch.

Quote:

Now Sony sells its HES for $3500. It has a 500GB drive and 200 BD slots. So the $3200 seems like a bargain, even after allowing for the cost of the HTPC, software and enclosures for the drives (the Sony could store up to 200 x 50GB + 500GB = 10.5TB for $3500).

I haven't looked at the Sony HES, but an older Sony DVD changer is what made me embark on this project in the first place.  The UI on the thing was absolutely horrendous, almost unusable.
DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile RegistrantStar ContributorBad Father
Registered: July 23, 2001
Registered: March 13, 2007
Posts: 4,596
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Quoting smeehrrr:
Quote:
Quoting mediadogg:
Quote:
Edit: Some interesting numbers: You can now buy 500GB SATA drives for $80 (TigerDirect.com). That means it would cost about $3200 for the drives alone to store 20TB. But the 1900 titles probably cost over $20,000, so ...

Yeah, if you amortize it over the number of discs in your collection it doesn't seem quite as bad.  There are some other advantages, too:
1) Don't need to keep all the keepcases.  Any standard case I strip the inserts out of and throw away the keepcase.  The "special" cases go into storage and don't take up any space in my house.
2) You can't scratch the disc.  It gets played once, then goes into a binder where it stays forever, unless a catastrophic machine failure happens.
3) You can play the discs anywhere in the house if you have a network.  I have a PC hooked up to each TV in the house, plus I can play them on any computer including the laptop.
4) Much easier searching.  My front end lets me search by title, by actor, by genre, or by purchase date. Makes it pretty easy to find something that I want to watch.

Quote:

Now Sony sells its HES for $3500. It has a 500GB drive and 200 BD slots. So the $3200 seems like a bargain, even after allowing for the cost of the HTPC, software and enclosures for the drives (the Sony could store up to 200 x 50GB + 500GB = 10.5TB for $3500).

I haven't looked at the Sony HES, but an older Sony DVD changer is what made me embark on this project in the first place.  The UI on the thing was absolutely horrendous, almost unusable.


What about viable backup? How much would that run?
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DVD Profiler Unlimited Registrantsmeehrrr
Registered: March 26, 2007
Posts: 196
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Quoting 8ballMax:
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What about viable backup? How much would that run?

I don't need to back it up, I have the DVDs.

That said, reripping after a drive failure is annoying, so I use Unraid from http://www.lime-technology.com, which gives me good performance and excellent protection from drive failure at a very attractive price point.  If a drive goes down, I pop in a new drive and Unraid rebuilds it for me.
DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile RegistrantStar ContributorBad Father
Registered: July 23, 2001
Registered: March 13, 2007
Posts: 4,596
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Quoting smeehrrr:
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Quoting 8ballMax:
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What about viable backup? How much would that run?


Quoting smeehrrr:
Quote:
I don't need to back it up, I have the DVDs.


God forbid you have a fire in your home which destroys your servers and DVDs. Sure, insurance should cover most of the cost of replacement so you can begin the arduous task of rebuilding your exstensive collection, but at least with an offsite backup you will have less work to do (ripping) and be able to enjoy your favorite films while rebuilding, wouldn't you?
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 Last edited: by Bad Father
DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile RegistrantDr. Killpatient
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Registered: May 19, 2007
Reputation: Highest Rating
United States Posts: 5,917
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They make server cases (more like a souped up safe) that you could store your hard drive media in that will protect it from a fire.  In the event of a fire, the cables leading to the safe are replaced.

As far as digital media goes, you'll want to also protect yourself against drive failures.  You can get a 4 TB NAS for a little over a grand using four 1 TB drives.  But you'll want to configure the NAS as a RAID so if a drive fails, you don't lose any data.  A RAID 5 will provide you good data read speed with minimal space cost - you lose 1/4th of your drives for parity data but if any drive in the RAID fails, you can continue until you replace it.  One con with a RAID 5 is that write is slow - but you shouldn't be doing much writing on the NAS once the movies are placed on it.  A RAID5 with a 4 TB NAS will give your 3 TB of space.

RAID redundancy has saved me many a time.  In fact, it's kind of a requirement for me since it seems that any hard drive within a few feet of me seems to have it's life expectancy cut to only a fraction.  I have a stack of drives next to my computer desk that have failed less than one year after the manufacture date printed on it.  Hell, I have a failed drive in my RAID 0-1 setup on my main PC (striping/mirror) right now that I need to replace.  Also need to replace my power supply in it because it recently burned out - noticed the PC was off when it should have been on, pushed the power button, and my UPS started screaming due to an overload and I could smell the tell-tale smell of fried electronics.

I'm a walking EMP, I swear.  And yes, I keep my NAS in a different room in a spot I don't tend to go.  And I keep frequent backups - for my backups even.
 Last edited: by Dr. Killpatient
DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile RegistrantDr. Killpatient
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Registered: May 19, 2007
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So the question is - how many NAS units will you need if you use 4 TB NAS's configured for RAID 5 (3 TB available)?

If you convert your standard DVDs movies to WMV-HD, it amounts to about 1 GB per hour.  I've stopped because I think it's only encoding into stereo audio but haven't looked into it in the past few months to see if the 5.1 sound is persisting.
DVD Profiler Unlimited Registrantsmeehrrr
Registered: March 26, 2007
Posts: 196
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Quoting 8ballMax:
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God forbid you have a fire in your home which destroys your servers and DVDs. Sure, insurance should cover most of the cost of replacement so you can begin the arduous task of rebuilding your exstensive collection, but at least with an offsite backup you will have less work to do (ripping) and be able to enjoy your favorite films while rebuilding, wouldn't you?

Of course, my current system is in now way inferior to a shelful of DVDs for this scenario, and I can store my physical DVDs offsite if I want to.
DVD Profiler Unlimited Registrantsmeehrrr
Registered: March 26, 2007
Posts: 196
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Dr. Killpatient, if you're embarking on a media server project I highly recommend you check out Unraid, it's truly superior to NAS for these scenarios.  You totally don't need RAID-5 for DVD (or even Blu-Ray) playback.
DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile RegistrantDr. Killpatient
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Registered: May 19, 2007
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I'll look into unraid but the RAID 5 was for redundency in case of a drive failure, not for playback.
DVD Profiler Unlimited Registrantsmeehrrr
Registered: March 26, 2007
Posts: 196
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Quoting Dr. Killpatient:
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I'll look into unraid but the RAID 5 was for redundency in case of a drive failure, not for playback.

Unraid provides single-drive fault tolerance at lower cost, that's why I use it.  It also has another advantage - if two drives go down simultaneously, you don't lose all your data, just the data on the failed drives.
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorJimmy S
Registered: March 15, 2007
Canada Posts: 1,982
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Quoting 8ballMax:
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God forbid you have a fire in your home which destroys your servers and DVDs. Sure, insurance should cover most of the cost of replacement (...)

Sure the insurance pay, but not all the DVDs can be replace... Some are OOP and almost impossible to find, that make a replacement impossible. At least if I were an home owner I could build a secure room for my films, but since I'm an house renter the risk is present (not that I loose any sleep because of that).
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorLewis_Prothero
Strength Through Unity
Registered: May 19, 2007
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Germany Posts: 6,730
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Quoting AESP_pres:
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Sure the insurance pay, but not all the DVDs can be replace... Some are OOP and almost impossible to find, that make a replacement impossible. At least if I were an home owner I could build a secure room for my films, but since I'm an house renter the risk is present (not that I loose any sleep because of that).

That's the risk any collector has.
Either you have your collection where you can see it, therefor it's unsafe. Or you put it somewhere safe (preferrably bank-safe), therefor you'd have to make a lot of effort when you want to see your collection.
To build a secure room in your house isn't of too much help either, for being very expensive it'll keep your collectionsize reasonable though.
It all seems so stupid, it makes me want to give up!
But why should I give up, when it all seems so stupid?


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