What to do with all those optical discs?! (1 Viewer)

[Kevin Collins]

Over this Black Friday, I wound up being sucked into that ding dong that always posts those "Blu-Ray Price Drops" and did my annual purchase of probably 50 new Blu-Rays. Well, this time I have exceed my continually growing rack system and frankly, I'm just getting tired of maintaining that amount of discs. Moving everything to another shelving unit to get more space in the "C" section, etc. Granted, I don't have the storage capacity for discs that Adam has, but I have quite a bit.

You can see my collection here, which is currently >2300. And a partial glimpse of my racks below.

At any rate, I am just tired of it. When I was working on HD DVD, AACS had the promise, that a person would be able to make a bit-for-bit duplicate of a HD DVD/ Blu-Ray disc and use it for home use. I was so excited about this as I would much rather have an experience like Kaleidescape, but with the same quality as the original optical disc. I also didn't want to spend the $ for a Kaleidescape solution which would be astronomical for the amount of discs I have.

When I was CES, Dave and I stopped by the Dune booth and interviewed them. You can watch it here. It was at this point that I decided that I was going to try to make the switch over to having my entire collection on spinning media where I could see my collection and watch anything in my collection anywhere in my house.

I've already embarked on this journey and every couple of days I will share some of the journey with you and list out the issues I have had on the journey. If anyone has already embarked on this, please chime in. If anyone hasn't but has really cool rack systems to store their collection, post them here also.

See you in the next couple of days!

 

[Bryan^H]

Wow, you even have all your titles alphabetized. That itself is quite an achievement.

 

[Cinescott]

I have about a tenth of that and I'm outgrowing my shelves.

 

[schan1269]

I tried alphabetic once...

Then Pirates was found when looking for Pirates of the Caribbean...(oops)

 

[ROclockCK]

What about some variant on those stackable collapsible crates?

Not very good for at-a-glance retrieval, but every collection has a bunch of seldom watched to likely never seen again titles that could be stacked to the ceiling in such bins if necessary. Saves library shelf space for those premium tiles of evergreen interest.

I think I'm up to 2 dozen of those suckers now...

 

[Brandon Conway]

I'm at about 1500 or so, and I find that it helps to thin it out on occasion. Not anything drastic, but as I cycle through viewing my owned films/shows I usually ask myself if I really ever think I'll want to watch it (or some of the bonus a release may include) again. I just recently decided to sell off some TV and a couple films because of this. It's a drop in the ocean, but it's something.

 

[Kevin Collins]

What about some variant on those stackable collapsible crates?

Not very good for at-a-glance retrieval, but every collection has a bunch of seldom watched to likely never seen again titles that could be stacked to the ceiling in such bins if necessary. Saves library shelf space for those premium tiles of evergreen interest.

I think I'm up to 2 dozen of those suckers now...

I'm really looking for a container that will allow for me to put BD/HD DVD titles standing up, with grooves in the container and the container only being high enough so that they can't stack.

My goal is to use a numbering system (I will get to that later) that "IF" I wanted to get the optical disc, I would look up the title and then find the number and go to that container and get the movie. This way I would never have to worry about expanding for alphabetical.

 

[Kevin Collins]

I'm at about 1500 or so, and I find that it helps to thin it out on occasion. Not anything drastic, but as I cycle through viewing my owned films/shows I usually ask myself if I really ever think I'll want to watch it (or some of the bonus a release may include) again. I just recently decided to sell off some TV and a couple films because of this. It's a drop in the ocean, but it's something.

If I wasn't involved in the format war, I would do that. But I have some duplicates of BD that I already have on HD DVD, or I have foreign HD DVD titles that were also done in the US, but encoded differently. So, there is sentimental value to some of those discs that prevent me from weeding them out.

At any rate, this is why I want to come up with a system where they are all on HDD's for instant access and not taking up space in the HT.

 

[Kevin Collins]

I tried alphabetic once...

Then Pirates was found when looking for Pirates of the Caribbean...(oops)

It is a PIA, that is why I "currently" use Invelos. I will write more about that later though.

 

[Kevin Collins]

Wow, you even have all your titles alphabetized. That itself is quite an achievement.

That's what Invelos is for... However, that doesn't solve the expanding in the middle problem....

 

[larryKR]

I have more than 1400 movies on dvd and Blu-ray, and I will be out of shelf space in a month or two. What I'm planning to do is remove all the dvd's that I have copies of on Blu-ray. This I'm guessing will be a significant number and free up some very valuable space. I then will store dvd's and blu-rays mixed together, rather than keeping them separate. All of this is a temporary fix.My vinyl and cd collection is much larger (too many to count) than my movie collection, which I keep in a different room. I believe I'm good there with shelf space for perhaps two years.

 

[Kevin Collins]

Post #2:

The first thing that I needed to figure out was a rough estimation of how much disk space this was going to take me. I started out figuring 30GB per title. That would amount to about 69TB. I already have a RAID 5 array that is 16TB (really 14TB due to the one drive being a spare parity drive). This RAID is for storing all the premium movies that I record from WMC for HBO, etc. Given they are not the same quality as BD/HD DVD, they are very nice for the family to watch in any of the rooms with a XBox WMC extender. Another identical RAID 5 array that is for my WHS machine to back-up all the machines in the house, including WMC.

When I initially started out with RAID configurations, I had to determine how I wanted to go about doing it. I could have done RAID 0, but I determined that was too risky if just one drive went bad, I would lose everything. So, I decided to implement RAID 5 so that one drive could fail and I could still have all my data, while replacing the defective drive with a new drive and the system rebuilding the RAID array.

The next question was a software RAID or a hardware RAID. After doing research I decided to go with a hardware RAID. I wound up getting an enclosure that also came with a RAID controller. The unit that I wound up getting was the same SansDigital 8 bay enclosure that I had bought previously.



I had two of these already and had them stocked with 2TB SATA HDD's (they didn't have 3TB HDD's when I bought those). To start this project off, I though I would just get another SansDigital tower and buy 3TB drives. Over Black Friday I found a bunch on NewEgg between $99 and $109 each. I also bought extras in case one drive fails. This gave me a RAID array of 21TB (remember one drive doesn't count for storage as it is the parity spare drive).
One thing to keep in mind here is the type of HDD's you are going to buy. I learned the hard way that Green HDD's do NOT work on RAID systems. They will give errors because they don't report back to the RAID controller fast enough. I have also found out that even "desktop" HDD's are NOT recommended by the RAID controller manufactures. You are supposed to buy an "enterprise" class drive, like the Seagate Red series of drives. Outside of the fact that they have a longer warranty and higher MTBF, they also report back to the controller in a fast enough manner that the controller doesn't think there is an issue.


Another thing to consider here is the amount of power consumption that these beasts consume. HighPoint, the manufacturer of the RAID card that comes with the SansDigital controller, has an option to spin down all the drives if they are not accessed within a period of time. I use this option as the power draw is down. The time for the drives to spin up is not terrible, but noticeable, particularly for the RAID that has all the movies that were recorded from WMC. Even though my family probably doesn't want to get to those (there is another HDD that is for the temporary TV shows, etc.), WMC wants to display all the recorded TV and that requires that beast to spin up all 8 drives.


OK, so I get my first RAID array built with 21TB of storage, the next question is what machine am I going to hook it up to, what software am I going to use to copy the discs to the HDD and what software am I going to use to manage the collection? I'll also post my dilemma regarding what I am doing now and the problems it is going to cause me moving forward. I'll post that tomorrow...


What I have learned over the last month is that this is going to cost ALOT of $$$ to have the convenience of getting my HD DVD, DVD and BD titles instantly. However, not nearly as much as Kaleidescape and my expansion costs will be substantially less as time goes on. So far I have done about 150 discs and started out with the kids titles and some of the TV series that my wife likes. They are actually pretty happy about being able to see those movies, etc. on the WMC that is in the kitchen.
What are other using for storing their digital media?

 

[Persianimmortal]

Sounds interesting, and I don't envy you having to transfer that many discs to the drives. In my experience, consumer HDDs are fine for RAID, they don't have to be enterprise class. I used WD Raptors in RAID 0 for several years with no problems or data loss on my PC. Obviously though, for maximum reliability, enterprise class drives are recommended as you say. RAID 5 is also a good choice for this purpose, because as you say RAID 0 is too risky - if just one drive dies it pretty much takes out all the data.

Anyway it sounds like you've done your research, and seem pretty happy with the results. It's definitely the way of the future, though I imagine it will take years for most people to feel comfortable doing this. For people who don't necessarily feel as confident, it is possible now to just use a built-in software RAID-like solution in the form of Window 8's Storage Spaces feature to easily combine multiple drives, and manage them, including a range of redundancy options. No extensive tech knowledge is necessary.

 

[Jari K]

I have more than 1400 movies on dvd and Blu-ray, and I will be out of shelf space in a month or two. What I'm planning to do is remove all the dvd's that I have copies of on Blu-ray. This I'm guessing will be a significant number and free up some very valuable space.

This is what I have been doing. If there's a Blu-ray release with the same - or very similar - extras (etc), I'll get rid of the old DVD.

The "problem" (for me, at least) is that many times they don't include all the extras from the old DVD, so I kinda have to keep the old DVD (at least for now). Other problem is that nobody wants those old DVDs, sometimes not even for free!

 

[schan1269]

What I've done, in some cases, is bought a triple disc(there are quad disc as well) case and combined my DVD and BD into one.

Then the DVD case gets "binned" in a special closet. Some cases I will get rid of if the case/artwork is dirty. Or(like Maltese Falcon) I'll combine all discs in one case and use the DVD cover art...as the BD cover art...sucks.

Case in point. Cinema Paradiso.

Original DVD set, "short" BD and "long" BD are all in the same case. When(and it often arises) there is a region conflict between discs, I'll add in my own sheet of paper to say "Region B BD" or whatever for the DVD.

 

[Ernest]

I purchased Blu-ray/DVD cases that hold up to 6 discs so I could combine common titles together. Iron Man, Fast and Furious, Bourne to name a few. Saved lots of space and kept common titles together.

 

[Kevin Collins]

I have more than 1400 movies on dvd and Blu-ray, and I will be out of shelf space in a month or two. What I'm planning to do is remove all the dvd's that I have copies of on Blu-ray. This I'm guessing will be a significant number and free up some very valuable space. I then will store dvd's and blu-rays mixed together, rather than keeping them separate. All of this is a temporary fix.My vinyl and cd collection is much larger (too many to count) than my movie collection, which I keep in a different room. I believe I'm good there with shelf space for perhaps two years.

What type of storage system are you using?

 

[Kevin Collins]

Sounds interesting, and I don't envy you having to transfer that many discs to the drives. In my experience, consumer HDDs are fine for RAID, they don't have to be enterprise class. I used WD Raptors in RAID 0 for several years with no problems or data loss on my PC. Obviously though, for maximum reliability, enterprise class drives are recommended as you say. RAID 5 is also a good choice for this purpose, because as you say RAID 0 is too risky - if just one drive dies it pretty much takes out all the data.

Anyway it sounds like you've done your research, and seem pretty happy with the results. It's definitely the way of the future, though I imagine it will take years for most people to feel comfortable doing this. For people who don't necessarily feel as confident, it is possible now to just use a built-in software RAID-like solution in the form of Window 8's Storage Spaces feature to easily combine multiple drives, and manage them, including a range of redundancy options. No extensive tech knowledge is necessary.

I've been wondering about software RAID for large numbers of disks and based on previous experiences with earlier versions of Windows. I used Windows 7 RAID, but that was simply RAID 0 and that bothered me. I've been using HW RAID without any issues, save issues when I tried Green HDD's and some relatively minor issues with some desktop drives where I was getting errors reported because the disk was not responding fast enough to the RAID controller.

In three years of having HW RAID 5 systems, I have had three drives go bad, but was always able to recover with RAID 5.

However, the more I have read about RAID 5, I'm thinking about converting over to a different HW RAID system that supports RAID 6. There seems to be a lot of case studies that show that only having one spare with RAID 5, that the disks typically fail around the same time and that if one disk goes bad, another one could go bad during the RAID rebuild process, at which point you are screwed. With RAID 6, two drives would have to go out to be screwed.

Right now I'm still using desktop HDD's because of the price delta between desktop and enterprise HDD's. However, I'm seriously considering dumping my RAID 5 controllers and moving to RAID 6.

 

[Kevin Collins]

What I've done, in some cases, is bought a triple disc(there are quad disc as well) case and combined my DVD and BD into one.

Then the DVD case gets "binned" in a special closet. Some cases I will get rid of if the case/artwork is dirty. Or(like Maltese Falcon) I'll combine all discs in one case and use the DVD cover art...as the BD cover art...sucks.

Case in point. Cinema Paradiso.

Original DVD set, "short" BD and "long" BD are all in the same case. When(and it often arises) there is a region conflict between discs, I'll add in my own sheet of paper to say "Region B BD" or whatever for the DVD.

Do you have any links or pictures of the cases you are using?

 

[Kevin Collins]

Post #3:

So, I have the 21TB RAID 5 system and I'm ready to start moving my collection over. This brings up the question of what software am I going to use to do this.

For management of my titles, I started using Invelos years ago based on the recommendations on this forum and from Adam. I've really liked Invelos, except that they didn't have a Windows Phone app. What I hate doing is going to BBY, Target, Walmart and finding great deals on BD's and not being able to remember if I already have the title or not. I think you can relate to this if you even have over 100 titles.

When I was at CES doing the Dune interview, I saw that they were using MyMovies as the software management tool. I also remember one of my friends talking about MyMovies and how cool it was to use the app on his iPhone when at a store to just scan the UPC code of the disc and find out immediately if he had it in his collection.

So, I went and started to investigate MyMovies. Reading all their documentation it seemed as good or better than Invelos. I went to purchase it and found that their system of purchasing the software was kind of strange. MyMovies goes off of a "points" system. Different point totals equate to different levels of functionality in the software. You can earn points by contributing to their database of titles or you can purchase 2500 points (~$100) to get everything. I opted to just purchase the 2500 points. They also have a 3 week trial period for you to test out the SW. I naively just went ahead and purchased the product, particularly after I found out that they had a native Windows Phone app that would allow me to accomplish the scenario above.

After having bought my 2500 points I started down the path of what versions of software would I use where and what would I use to actually copy my discs to the RAID array.

My setup, I have a headless Windows 7 WMC with a 14TB total RAID 5 array for storing recorded movies. I have 5 XBox 360's in the house used primarily for being a WMC extender and I have a HP Touchsmart running WMC mounted on the wall in the kitchen. I also have a WHS 2011 server with another 14TB total RAID 5 array.

Given the tight integration that MyMovies has with WMC, I thought I would make my headless WMC machine be the "server" and "storage" machine. So, I hooked up my 21TB RAID to the headless WMC and installed the MyMovies software on it. The integration of MyMovies with WMC is fantastic. It replicates to all the extenders in regards to the menu's. Now the problem with extenders is that you cannot actually play DVD, HD DVD or BD movies because the extender doesn't support playing back optical media. So, you are kind of screwed there. There are some options. One options is to have MyMovies also make a MP4 of the movie and then it will play back on the extender. Given that my extenders are never used for reference quality viewing, that is probably OK -- I'm still in the process of testing that out. MyMovies also has a beta feature that will allow you to make lossless MKV files after copying the disc, but MKV files do not play back on WMC extenders.

At any rate I wasn't super concerned about that as I was planning on just buying Dune's for each room to sit next to the XBox 360. I'm still up in the air about that.

Tomorrow I will go into the details of what machine I wound up copying my optical discs from and what reasons I chose what I did. I will also go over the various options that I tried for copying discs and where I am today with all of this.

I will also talk about my experiences with MyMovies running on a native WMC machine and what that was like in a future post.

I will also talk about the headaches that I have had with MyMovies in this entire process in a later post.

Questions for all of you....

How many are using MyMovies and what are your experiences with it and how do you use it?

How many are using Invelos and what are your experience with it and how do you use it?

Is anyone else copying their purchased optical discs to HDD's for playback?