Storage solutions?

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idig
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Storage solutions?

Post by idig » Jan 4th, '15, 17:11

Hi,
Probably most downloaders will delete a drama after watching it. Unfortunately, I tend to keep everything I download. And, of course, this creates a problem for storage. Was wondering how other collectors are dealing with the storing their dramas?
Just some of my thoughts:
= do not want to go the route of disc(dvd/BR) storage, tried this before and found it to be cumbersome (for me)
= looked into zipping/compressing long ago but the compression rate for video files was not that great
= I tend to keep away from the latest large capacity hard drives, eg 4T, since they tend to have a high failure rate

I know just adding more hard drives is the obvious answer but including the backup drives, this can get costly. Just wondering if there is something I'm overlooking... :nuts:
Thanks

RetroHelix
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Re: Storage solutions?

Post by RetroHelix » Jan 4th, '15, 19:38

I don't store every drama I watch but the good and rare ones. Since I lost some dramas because of a harddisk crash I started to store everything on two drives (RAID 1). You can do this by using just software or with a hardware/software solution. Imo the most comfortable way is to use a NAS that has a downloadmanager (torrrent, ftp, ddl...) and RAID storage. This way you don't even need to turn on your computer to add downloads.

160 $ for 2 TB drives isn't much imo. But it depends on how much you download.

saigo_x
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Re: Storage solutions?

Post by saigo_x » Jan 4th, '15, 20:52

Unfortunately there isn't any real "solution" to storing old files. The move to HD quality has made it even harder. In the old days I could fit all if not most of a series on a single DVDR, but now many files are over 1GB in size. Personally I stopped downloading as much as I use to. I keep newer stuff on the hard drive (1TB), copy things I may need later to an 1GB external for easy access, and burn everything else to disc. I use to have 2 hard drives, one being for "storage", but I found that the more space I had the more I tended to fill it up hehe. It's a pain to organize and archive things, but it was well worth it when I had to reupload things to RareDoramas after Megaupload was shutdown. Hard drives have a tendency to fail sooner or later and disc has proven the only reliable medium for archiving. Although I have had more than few discs with errors over the years, those were nothing in comparison to the 2 internal and 1 external hard drive failures that resulted in the loss of terabytes of files.

bmwracer
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Re: Storage solutions?

Post by bmwracer » Jan 4th, '15, 23:59

I think hard disks are the way to go... Just don't keep them powered up all the time. The reliability of the drive goes way up if you don't have them running 24/7.

I've got several 2TB drives (~ $70 each at Fry's) that I use externally with a hdd docking station and I only power them up and access them when I need them. I think that goes the long way to preventing them from failing.

idig
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Re: Storage solutions?

Post by idig » Jan 5th, '15, 21:35

Thanks for the replies/input.

My current setup is similar to bmwracer - buy bare harddrives (from Fry's/NewEgg) and set them in external docking bases. It slowly transitioned from 1TB to 2TB to now 3TB drives. As you can see from the image, I recently upgraded my Y drive to 3TB but need to do so for 3 more drives (plus 3 more for backup). (the K drive is Jmovies).

Again, was just wondering if there were other options. Unfortunately, this is an addiction :P and it requires a lot to maintain it.

Thanks again.
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bmwracer
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Re: Storage solutions?

Post by bmwracer » Jan 6th, '15, 06:10

Whoa, that's a ton of stuff you've got.

Hard disks are probably the cheapest as far as cost per GB is concerned.

I think tape drives have pretty large capacities, but access is really slow... And magnetic tape is rather fragile.

idig
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Re: Storage solutions?

Post by idig » Jan 7th, '15, 03:19

LOL...Tape drives...hmmm...didn't consider tape drives...seems kinda archaic(?!?!) - But I did go to New Egg to see what's on market. But I agree with bmwracer - hard disk drives are the best value at the moment. Just need to account for drive failures/crashes.

Yeah...I got a lot of stuff...could probably clean it up a bit (got different res versions for some series).

When I have the time (and money) would like to build a FreeNAS system. But this still doesn't resolve the disk space issue.

Thanks!

koshonin
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Re: Storage solutions?

Post by koshonin » Jan 7th, '15, 15:02


RetroHelix
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Re: Storage solutions?

Post by RetroHelix » Jan 7th, '15, 19:00

koshonin wrote:maybe we should think about something like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet#Di ... ng_of_data
or
https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs
If storing terabytes of files online is a solution for you I would recommend crashplan, backblaze or livedrive.

koshonin
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Re: Storage solutions?

Post by koshonin » Jan 7th, '15, 19:26

RetroHelix wrote:If storing terabytes of files online is a solution for you I would recommend crashplan, backblaze or livedrive.
as I understand those are commercial and follow a totally different concept

The point I was trying to make:
* p2p bittorrent for high demand/recent files and
* p2p-distributed-data-storage for long-time-availability (right now we do that with seed-requests)

I admit that with the recent crackdown it would be necessary to use something like i2p for such a community storage

RetroHelix
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Re: Storage solutions?

Post by RetroHelix » Jan 8th, '15, 17:31

koshonin wrote:
RetroHelix wrote:If storing terabytes of files online is a solution for you I would recommend crashplan, backblaze or livedrive.
as I understand those are commercial and follow a totally different concept

The point I was trying to make:
* p2p bittorrent for high demand/recent files and
* p2p-distributed-data-storage for long-time-availability (right now we do that with seed-requests)

I admit that with the recent crackdown it would be necessary to use something like i2p for such a community storage
I understand the concept thats why I posted a better alternative. I like the idea of i2p and sharing in general but its not really a storage solution for collectors.

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