Storage Media (DVDR, HDD, etc.) - discussion

[monogroover]

Originally Posted by chupachups

now I use external HDDs in conjunction with a sumvision cyclone MKV adapter, much tidier solution than 1000s of DVDR lying around, and completely silent as there is no fan in sight (or sound). 5 external HDD holding over 800 DVD9 in the same space as a shoebox

Nice solution! As long as you're backing up.

Another possibility is to use RAID, a Drobo for example will help to guard against data loss due to disk failure.

http://www.google.com/products/catal...d=0CEsQ8wIwAg#

[chupachups]

Originally Posted by monogroover

Nice solution! As long as you're backing up.

Another possibility is to use RAID, a Drobo for example will help to guard against data loss due to disk failure.

http://www.google.com/products/catal...d=0CEsQ8wIwAg#

I shyed away from raid, due to the need for fans and hence the additional noise

Its not too much of a hassle for me as I still have the original pressed disks somewhere inaccessible in the house

If I were worried about losing a drive, I would backup to a separate set of mirrors

Of course people could stick a raid system in a spare room, where it can whir away without being intrusive, the sumvision can connect to network shares, so the movies don't have to be in the same room as your tv

[eelcat]

This might be slightly off topic as it's not strictly about storage but the opposite. The other week I finally bought what is known here as a media player, which is a small box that hooks up to a spare AV slot on the tv. This box has a USB slot which can accommodate your basic flash drive, a memory card reader or even an external hard drive. It reads avi, mpeg, vob, mp3/4, ogg, jpeg etc etc. The beauty of this is that whatever you download you do not have to burn to a disc in order to view it on the tv weather it be a movie, music or photo's. Here in Australia they're about $60 for your basic garden variety player, but you can go the extra bucks and get a high def. one with facilities for recording straight off tv. So because of this, the outlay on blank DVD's now is going to plummet as I'll only need them for archival purposes.

[chupachups]

Originally Posted by eelcat

This might be slightly off topic as it's not strictly about storage but the opposite. The other week I finally bought what is known here as a media player, which is a small box that hooks up to a spare AV slot on the tv. This box has a USB slot which can accommodate your basic flash drive, a memory card reader or even an external hard drive. It reads avi, mpeg, vob, mp3/4, ogg, jpeg etc etc. The beauty of this is that whatever you download you do not have to burn to a disc in order to view it on the tv weather it be a movie, music or photo's. Here in Australia they're about $60 for your basic garden variety player, but you can go the extra bucks and get a high def. one with facilities for recording straight off tv. So because of this, the outlay on blank DVD's now is going to plummet as I'll only need them for archival purposes.

in the UK, you have quite a choice, some that come to mind are

popcorn hour (really expensive)
wd-tv (£70 ?)
sumvision cyclone mkv (£70 ?)
sumvision mini media (£20)

the sumvision mini media is really good for people on a budget, and who only watch DVDs or xvid (not MKV)...it sports HDMI and an SD as well as a USB port so will hook up to external HDD or SD card. it is small enough to fit into a pocket, so coupled with a 320GB portable HDD will keep the kids happy when away from home

[vo1v0d]

necer buy dvds on ebay; the failure rate for me has been up to 25%

[Schwenck]

After trying external USB disk drives, which tended to fail (though I still have a 4 Tb one, which has been fine), I finally splashed out and bought a small NAS for backup. It has 16 Tb over four disks, which I have configured as mirrored disks, reducing the capacity to about 8 Tb. All our computers get back up to this.

In addition, all key things - mostly family photos - get backed up to two cloud services. We had been using Google and Flickr, but Flickr has recently announced a major drop in it's previously generous storage limit. Now, I am experimenting with Shoebox as a second Cloud backup. Both are free for a basic service (all you need for a backup) and offer very large capacities.

I generally work on the basis of about 5 copies for things you really want to keep: 3 local, and 2 in the cloud. Mostly, this is all done automatically. I also used to back up photos to DVDs, but haven't for the last few years, but might do when I have time.

As a former IT pro, I am well aware of how easy it is to loose electronic information. I have also seen how often disks give up. Personally, I think I have lost about 6 disk drives over the past 40 years, and that excludes drives in work computers.