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How Do You Store Your CDs?
lxs asks: "Let's face it, CDs are a pain. They are a great way to store your data, but when you have hundreds, or even thousands of CDRs and not much physical space, storage becomes a problem. With the advent of DVD+/-Rs DVD-RAM and Blu-ray this problem will not go away, since we all will collect thousends of those in the coming years. Jewel cases take up too much space; CD folders are better, but still wasteful (and expensive); and spindles are great, but you can't find anything. I've toyed with the idea of buying paper CD envelopes, and fill up a couple of old-fashioned 5 1/4" floppy cases with CDs (those were efficient: 200+ floppies in a plastic shoebox!), but there may be a better solution out there. So, Slashdot: how do you store your CDs?"
I can get a 200+ jukebox CD player for my home stereo. Why can't I buy the equivalent for my PC? Daisy-chaining a couple of those together would be a perfect solution for me.
Learn to Play Go
With hard disks at about a buck a gigabyte, it only costs around 65 cents to store a completely full CD. Paper holders are nearly useless because you have to look at each CDs face to see what the disc contains (they travel well, however). Jewel cases can cost about 45 cents and they take up a lot of room. Neither of the two are amenable to grep. The convenience I get for paying the "extra" 20 cents to keep them all on a filer is well worth it to me.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
I ultimately settled on DiscSox DJ sleeves in an IKEA shelf for my Audio CD collection (~650 CDs), but I use CaseLogic folders/spindles for most of my data discs. (Stuff I need to find in the folders, spindles for archival stuff.)
The discsox DJ sleeves are great 'cause they can hold all the inserts from the jewel box, and the DJ insert tabs allow for quick scanning of the sleeves' contents.
The DiscSox aren't cheap at about $0.50/sleeve, but they hold up better than paper. There are many other sleeves like this on the market, but the discsox hold up better in my experience.
Balam>CD's get lost or scratched
For fixing scratched CD's, I once bought an advanced "CD Repair kit", wich supposedly would be the best thing in the world. That simply sucked, and didn't actually fix any CD I had.
However, I successfully recovered many *unreadable* scratched CD's and DVD's, simply by wiping toothpaste (Crest worked for me) from the center to the border using a soft cloth (and washing it later, of course). Yes, it's weird, but actually works better then the CD repair kits I tested. Try it in your unreadable CD's. Worked for me, at least for superficial scratches.
I read this tip in the appropriate section of a household magazine but it seems that once in a decade they actually manage to publish a good tip: instead of 5¼" floppy folders, use coffee maker filters, put CDs in there and you can even write on them. You can then put them wherever you like, even a shoebox or some other container that you can browse easily.
I just tried this and, wow, the reviews I found were not too hot, to say the least. To say the most, it seems that people fucking hate this thing.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
1. Number CDs in YYMMDD-char(base 36) format (I'm unlikely to burn > 36 a day)
2. Get an empty CD can
3. put in the oldest 10/20 CDs in chron' order.
4. put a bit on platic sheet - size of a cd + a 1/2" x 1" tab - threaded onto the spindle, and write on the tab the number of the cd it's sitting on.
5. repeat steps 4 & 5 till can is full.
6. lock it up & label the can case.
when you open the can, the tabs spring out.
(Do I need to explain the rest?)
job done
(oh yes - a little spreadsheet too : cd number,subject type (e.g mp3,pdf,app),extra info (e.g. for albums- artist,album,#tracks,bps,vbr/cbr....))
-- Mod me down. I am not a karma tart. ffs,gag
on the same note, i hear of something that will work in the same way but to a much better degree. go to a plastics/glass shop in your area, and ask if they have any polishs or waxes with the same refractive index as CDs (1.55, i think). i heard somewhere before of someone owning a floor polish with that exact same refractive index, and it worked beautifully on every CD he tried it on. he was in the floor care industry, though, so whatever he used wasnt directly available to consumers. supposedly, glass/plastic shops will sell something like that, since a polish with that refractive index will make certain plastics look the best.
this is all from memory or something from a year or two ago, though, so i could be a bit wrong about the details.
Though this doessn't solve the issue of physical CD storage, it is an elegant solution to gain access to all of your CD data at any time without needing to locate the CD.
Build a Virtual CD Jukebox.
How are you going to keep them down on the farm once they've seen Karl Hungus?
Never quite understood why he did that, but I have to admire his ability to catalog things like that.
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
I put them in an metal army surplus military case, airtight, about $10 each or so. I use the 840 Catridges, 5.56 MM, 10 Rd. Clips Bandoleers. It will store jewel cases and anything smaller.
I doubt that this would be at all simple for anyone who hadn't been in libraries putting books away for fifteen years of their life, but there you go. I also try to keep a relavent catalogue with cross-indexing, but... didn't i mention i'm crazy?
I just use any piece of 8.5 x 11 paper I find to make a sleeve:
1. Take the piece of paper, and holding it portrait-wise, fold the bottom up to about an inch down the page (try this for a while with a CD in it, and you'll see how it works.)
2. fold that top inch down into a flap.
3. Open it up, and fold in about 1.5 inches on each side. (Again, use the CD in it, and you'll see how I mean.)
4. Toss CDs into the inside flaps, fold it up, and fold the top flap over. Presto! Instant and compant CD sleeve.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
Anyway, the software supports many of these attached to one computer, so you can buy as many as you need. Obviously real estate starts to become a concern, but you can always buy a long USB cable and stuff these out of the way somewhere. Still, though, it's a pretty nifty arrangement, and I like mine a lot.
I've been working up a little backup system to do just this. So far it's just in the first stage, capturing data for the catalog. I wrote a little perl script that'll traverse the CD's directory structure and spit out the full path of all files, along with type, size, date, owner, etc. So, I pop in a CD, go to /Volumes/CD_Name (OS X), run the script and redirect its output to a text file (~/backups/CD_Name). Eject and pop in the next one. It's a very simple script but I put it here if anyone's interested.
Now, it's probably not so useful to you just yet, because I haven't implemented the next phase of my plan. I want to write a little perl script to take all the text 'catalog' files I generate, and store them in a MySQL database. I should have just done this to begin with, but I was lazy! Once in the database, I can query it pretty easily based on whatever criteria I want, and hopefully find the file(s) I'm looking for. A slick web interface will complete the project. But for now, a simple grep pattern ~/backups/* is good enough.
Of course I label each CD the same as the volume name, or else the whole system would be useless. Then for storage (back to the original topic), I bought some 3-ring binder pages at Staples that hold CDs. Made by CaseLogic I think, and the package had 25 pages to hold a total of 200 discs. I got 2 big binders, and when I'm finished, primary backups and software CDs will go in one, staying at home. Redundant backups of important data will go in the other, in a storage unit I rent.
I also commented on this in the poll the other week. Not that anyone cares. ;-)
Say hello to zMac.