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?"

Comments

Great Question

[mark*workfire]

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.

Re:Great Question

[walt-sjc]

Yeah, great except for the fact that it's about 7 times more expensive than a 120G hard drive that holds over 200 CD's, takes much more space, more power, and is slower than snail shit. This is that reason that jukeboxes are all but dead in the computer arena.

The question was about storing CD's, not accessing them. I keep frequently used CD's on a hard disk that I don't backup (since I can recover from originals farily easily.) For storing, I got huge packs of paper sleeves for the CD's and store them in a modified old dresser that looked nice. Basically I built new heavy duty drawer boxes out of 3/4" cabinet grade plywood for the sides, 1/2" plywood for the bottom, and heavy-duty full extension drawer slides. I put the original drawer front on the box so it looks nice.

I get about 1000 CD's in a drawer that way, which is fucking heavy - so it needs the modified drawers. I also put in some front-to-back dividers to keep things neat. I use tag-board dividers to label sections so I can find things easily.

You can also find commercial heavy duty steel units with the right sized drawers from most major office supply companies, but they cost >$1,000.

Spindle

[funkhauser]

I got into this very bad habit of storing rarely-used CDs on a large CD-R spindle. It's terribly inefficient. Don't do it. I think that paper envelopes, labeled, and stored as you suggested is a fantastic idea... ahh, yet another project for my summer break. :)

discsox

[balamw]

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

What I Do .

[jantheman]

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....))

Re:VCDJ

[jpsst34]

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.

Dewey Decimal

[Anonymous Coward]

This is going to sound quite a bit weird, but where i have them in jewel cases in boxes, or where i have them loose separated by sleeves, I tab them by dewey decimal. (i used to be a library aide.) So when i'm looking for my literature it's under literature by type, fiction by author, and when i want pictures of friends they are under biography.

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?