Storage Options for Archiving

[pavanpd]

I'm relatively (a few years) new to the anime archiving scene and I love to download and watch the uploads over here. (Only 1080p please!) However, I find myself quickly running out of storage space inspite of possessing several hard disk drives.

Could you all, if possible share how you store all your files? I would love to get some options or recommendations about what kind of setup I should go for which would be economical as well as give me enough space to download all that I want. For me personally, cloud storage is not an option as internet in my country is neither unlimited nor as affordable.

[MaxxCatt]

I have a hot-swap 3.5" hdd bay on the front of my computer. But I also have a 4 bay USB 3 docking station that accepts 2.5 and 3.5" drives.

I store all my stuff on 3.5" internal drives.

The 4 bay made it easy for me to organize all my drives by type: Movies, TV shows and of course Anime. It's a lot easier to find things when you can grab a drive by Category.

Edited August 12, 2017 by MaxxCatt
speel'n

[FillInTheBlank]

External HDDs work just fine for storage for shows you aren't going to be watching a lot. Just do a little research on them before buying.
For example the Western Digital MyBook series which look like perfectly good candidates but the HDD enclosure encrypts all data put onto the drive whether you want to or not and if that enclosure dies for any reason you cannot decrypt it. 
WD support cannot help you either.

https://community.wd.com/t/wd-my-book-duo-data-forever-lost-if-drive-enclosure-dies/6496/10

[ezikialrage]

I have a couple of external hard drives.I also burn anime on dvd.  Although one of these days I might get a bluray writer and start burning on bluray. That way all my eggs are not in one basket.

[aukaauka]

I used to keep everything on 1-4tb external hard drives and I'd just buy another one of whatever size was the most value for money when I started running out of space.

 

But recently I decided that because I wanted all my media to be in one place and I wanted some protection so I didn't lose a load of data if a hard drive died, I decided to build a storage server.

 

Best way to go about a storage server is to build one yourself out of Lower End computer components and then put some server grade hard drives in there.

 

I guarantee any cheap system you build will be way better and cheaper then the compact pre built systems you can buy and will give you much more flexibility.

 

Here are the components I used in my build https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/FGdxzM  tho I spent way more on the motherboard then I probably needed to and you only really need half the RAM 

 

The hard drives are always the expensive part but you can put in however many you like at first and put more in when you need more storage though you will need to if you want your data protection in case of hard drive failure.

 

I use unraid as my operating system which has a one-off payment but comes to the 30 day trial  

 

Hope this helps 

Edited August 31, 2017 by aukaauka

[pavanpd]

10 hours ago, aukaauka said:

I used to keep everything on 1-4tb external hard drives and I'd just buy another one of whatever size was the most value for money when I started running out of space.

 

But recently I decided that because I wanted all my media to be in one place and I wanted some protection so I didn't lose a load of data if a hard drive died, I decided to build a storage server.

 

Best way to go about a storage server is to build one yourself out of Lower End computer components and then put some server grade hard drives in there.

 

I guarantee any cheap system you build will be way better and cheaper then the compact pre built systems you can buy and will give you much more flexibility.

 

Here are the components I used in my build https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/FGdxzM  tho I spent way more on the motherboard then I probably needed to and you only really need half the RAM 

 

The hard drives are always the expensive part but you can put in however many you like at first and put more in when you need more storage though you will need to if you want your data protection in case of hard drive failure.

 

I use unraid as my operating system which has a one-off payment but comes to the 30 day trial  

 

Hope this helps 

Every bit of info does! Thanks for sharing!

[blackblades]

An hdd, you could could get a hdd for each letter or 2 /3 letters on one, that'll solve that problem. Have them organized from a to z like dvd collections. Does that sound right.

[Anime4Life123]

Seagate Archive Drive 8tb its about 225 on Amazon designed for cold storage i have bunch of them worth it...

[Garo7]

It is jusy my opinion mind you, but I would stick to Western Digital, and not one of those crappy external USB pieces of crap either, that die like clockwork every 1-2 years. Get a WD Sata III Black or Gold, for anything over 1 to 2 TB. You'll pay a little more, but WD may give you the best chance if you really want your data safe from unexpected drive failure.

[thedoctor2014]

I have a lot of bays in my computer so have a few 4tb HDD in them.

Edited March 13, 2018 by thedoctor2014

[normalsomeplace]

On 8/21/2017 at 5:57 PM, ezikialrage said:

I have a couple of external hard drives.I also burn anime on dvd.  Although one of these days I might get a bluray writer and start burning on bluray. That way all my eggs are not in one basket.

@ezikialrage I was wondering if you were open to the idea of how you archive your anime via DVD , a little insight is hugely appreciated. I have tried and failed .

[ezikialrage]

On 9/8/2018 at 1:18 PM, normalsomeplace said:

@ezikialrage I was wondering if you were open to the idea of how you archive your anime via DVD , a little insight is hugely appreciated. I have tried and failed .

You need a dvd burner program and good quality burnable dvds. I use Memorex or Phillips burnable dvds. I usually do data dvds since they are they easiest. As long as you don't exceed the maximum space you should be able to easily burn anime to a dvd. The size of a burnable DVD I think is 4.7. Might be a little less than that, but most dvd burner programs will tell you if you exceeded the size. The number of episodes you can burn to a dvd depends on the size of the files themselves.

 

 

 

[Koby]

18 minutes ago, ezikialrage said:

You need a dvd burner program and good quality burnable dvds. I use Memorex or Phillips burnable dvds. I usually do data dvds since they are they easiest. As long as you don't exceed the maximum space you should be able to easily burn anime to a dvd. The size of a burnable DVD I think is 4.7. Might be a little less than that, but most dvd burner programs will tell you if you exceeded the size. The number of episodes you can burn to a dvd depends on the size of the files themselves.

 

 

 

I use to burn dvds like that, but shit when I needed them, even as soon as a few months later, they all had errors or failed to transfer off due to "cyclic redundancy" (and this was across various brands including: memorex, phillips, verbatim, and others).

 

That and now days most anime episodes I download are 2-3GB each... with movies being 10-20 GB each... Making DVDs completely useless until I wanted to split .rar them across multiple discs. A single 12 episode series would take roughly 8 to 9 discs.

 

And when you factor in the price of the discs, even if you catch a big sale, say $15 for a 100 pack. With a 100 discs if you managed to fill every one of them to 100%, which you won't due to how you'd manage to make them fit, you'd only get around 430 GB.... for the $15. That means for $75 you're only getting about 2TB of storage if you managed to fully utilize every disc to 100%. And this was factoring in a good sale price on the discs. Normal price for 100pk of DVDs in stores like Bestbuy often run between $35 to $50.

 

A 2TB hard drive is usually around $70, takes up less space, and you're able to delete and put new things on it to trump old releases, etc... Which means it's completely silly to opt to go the disc route over using hard drives.

 

If you're worried about data loss, put your drives into a raid configuration. So if one fails, you know about it right away and you don't even lose anything. With discs on the other hand, there isn't much you can do besides burn multiple copies and hope one of them works the next time you want to use them.

[normalsomeplace]

22 hours ago, Koby said:

I use to burn dvds like that, but shit when I needed them, even as soon as a few months later, they all had errors or failed to transfer off due to "cyclic redundancy" (and this was across various brands including: memorex, phillips, verbatim, and others).

 

That and now days most anime episodes I download are 2-3GB each... with movies being 10-20 GB each... Making DVDs completely useless until I wanted to split .rar them across multiple discs. A single 12 episode series would take roughly 8 to 9 discs.

 

And when you factor in the price of the discs, even if you catch a big sale, say $15 for a 100 pack. With a 100 discs if you managed to fill every one of them to 100%, which you won't due to how you'd manage to make them fit, you'd only get around 430 GB.... for the $15. That means for $75 you're only getting about 2TB of storage if you managed to fully utilize every disc to 100%. And this was factoring in a good sale price on the discs. Normal price for 100pk of DVDs in stores like Bestbuy often run between $35 to $50.

 

A 2TB hard drive is usually around $70, takes up less space, and you're able to delete and put new things on it to trump old releases, etc... Which means it's completely silly to opt to go the disc route over using hard drives.

 

If you're worried about data loss, put your drives into a raid configuration. So if one fails, you know about it right away and you don't even lose anything. With discs on the other hand, there isn't much you can do besides burn multiple copies and hope one of them works the next time you want to use them.

I have tried DVD's  for much older stuff , on most cases I use a hard disk.I initially had the idea of burning a DVDand popping in into a DVD player to play shows,but that never worked out.

[ezikialrage]

On 9/12/2018 at 11:45 AM, Koby said:

I use to burn dvds like that, but shit when I needed them, even as soon as a few months later, they all had errors or failed to transfer off due to "cyclic redundancy" (and this was across various brands including: memorex, phillips, verbatim, and others).

 

That and now days most anime episodes I download are 2-3GB each... with movies being 10-20 GB each... Making DVDs completely useless until I wanted to split .rar them across multiple discs. A single 12 episode series would take roughly 8 to 9 discs.

 

And when you factor in the price of the discs, even if you catch a big sale, say $15 for a 100 pack. With a 100 discs if you managed to fill every one of them to 100%, which you won't due to how you'd manage to make them fit, you'd only get around 430 GB.... for the $15. That means for $75 you're only getting about 2TB of storage if you managed to fully utilize every disc to 100%. And this was factoring in a good sale price on the discs. Normal price for 100pk of DVDs in stores like Bestbuy often run between $35 to $50.

 

A 2TB hard drive is usually around $70, takes up less space, and you're able to delete and put new things on it to trump old releases, etc... Which means it's completely silly to opt to go the disc route over using hard drives.

 

If you're worried about data loss, put your drives into a raid configuration. So if one fails, you know about it right away and you don't even lose anything. With discs on the other hand, there isn't much you can do besides burn multiple copies and hope one of them works the next time you want to use them.

  I never had any problems with playback. Nor have I had any problems with copying information off the dvds. I usually use the cyberlink power2go program that came free with my dvd burder. 

 

I don't download 2 to 3 gig size episodes and 10 to 20 gig size movies unless there is no other option.

 

True a hard drive is overall cheaper than burnable DVD. However 10 or 15 bucks for for a stack of burnable DVDs is is cheap. Plus its not like I am downloading a shitload of series all at ounce and trying to back them up on DVD.

 

I use external hard drives for back up too. But if a hard drive goes out then I am out a bunch of series. If a dvd goes out then I am out a single or half series. If I find a better quality encode of a series then I toss out the old copy and burn a new own.

 

A raid configuration does sound like a great idea.

On 9/13/2018 at 10:25 AM, normalsomeplace said:

I have tried DVD's  for much older stuff , on most cases I use a hard disk.I initially had the idea of burning a DVDand popping in into a DVD player to play shows,but that never worked out.

Most DVD players that can play video files from data DVDs are not going to play most anime encodes out there.   A blu ray player on the other hand will. When I used to have a DVD player I would have to convert a lot of anime series to .avi container with a DivX or Xvid codec if I wanted to watch anime on my tv instead of my computer. If if was subbed anime I would have have to hard code the subs first before burning the files to a data dvd. They also couldn't exceed a certain video dimension size.  If a dvd doesn't support playing video files from a data dvd then you would have to create a dvd video disc. Which you would need ConvertXtoDVD or some other similar program to create a dvd video. Which makes it play more like a traditional dvd with menus and chapters.

 

 

 If you are just wanting to watch download anime on your tv then A lot of blu ray players will let you pop in a USB flash drive.  So you can just copy some video files to a flash drive, pop it into into the USB slot on your blu ray player and watch them on your tv. But you should check to  see if that blu ray playe supports playing files from a usb flash drive and what formats and codecs your blu ray will play. However I don't know any that will play stylized soft subs.

Edited September 14, 2018 by ezikialrage

[normalsomeplace]

I used to do that via USB , but my TV would only be capable of playing video in MP4 and the occasional MKV but the dvd player would play the same files as well. Currently I don't have a Blu-ray player.i am looking to upgrade my PC first then a Blu-ray player.