Do You Need More Space for Your Media Needs?

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Do You Need More Space for Your Media Needs?

Posted by Cliff on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @10:39AM from the fulfilling-the-endless-need-for-more-free-bytes dept.

ewanrg asks: "I have about 1/2 Terabyte of storage on my couple of home systems, and it's filling up rapidly with captured Home Videos and shows recorded off my TiVO. I'm thinking that if I want to get through the next season of TV and the Holiday season at home I need to add at least a Terabyte of storage. My first thought was to use DVD-R (since I have a burner). However, if you assume that you use about 4.4 Gigs (in real terms) per DVD-R, then you'd need 230 DV-Rs to hold about a terabyte of data. Inconvenient if you're trying to find which of 10 DVDs you put that episode of Futurama on - particularly if you recorded them as they came (over a few years) rather than wait until you could get them every night on Cartoon Network. I've also looked at the various NAS devices out there, but $8-$20K seems a bit much. What I'd really like would be an inexpensive drive or array I could hook up to my PC which has a S-Video out port. I could then use all sorts of Media Library programs to find a file and play it. Can folks suggest something big and reasonably fast with an affordable prosumer price tag?"

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Well it all depends. by SmallFurryCreature · 2003-09-23 10:45 · Score: 3, Insightful

I have gone the cheapo method.
A dual P3 (second hand) fitted with cheap promise ata cards. Let linux combine them into raids and you got pretty cheap storage for home use. Sure the speed is not going to win any benchmarks but for home use who cares?
Only problem is that you can have a max of 3 promise cards. So that limits you to 16 discs.
Of course if you are an american you can now get pretty cheap 200gig drives. So that gives you a lot of storage even with raid5.

--

MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Re:Maybe the problem isn't storage space.... by NanoGator · 2003-09-23 10:54 · Score: 3, Insightful

"If you don't have time to watch it within the first week, are you ever really going to watch it?"

Obviously you've never done the "oo I got a day off" M*A*S*H marathon.

I hate problems like this. The guy wants a problem solved, not a reason not to solve it. If he wants to build a library, let him do it. Frankly, I wish this technology had been around a few years ago. Shows come and go. It's damn near impossible to find the majority of Mystery Science Theater episodes that aired on Comedy Central. That's why the Digital Archive Project is up and running. They don't want that show to die just because Comedy Central wouldn't renew it.

--
"Derp de derp."
Maybe you should get a life by fm6 · 2003-09-23 11:08 · Score: 3, Insightful

So a guy collects stuff you consider useless. So what? I own too many books, I know an otherwise sane lady who owns way too many shoes. Maybe we all need to cut back, but I don't think any of us are ignorant of that possibility.
If we start a conversation based on "how do I organize all my crap", butting in with a lecture on the crappiness of crap is arrogant and offtopic.
I'm assuming, of course, that you don't have any little vices that you prefer to cope with rather than simply get rid of. Or am I mistaken?
Get a media database by Kris_J · 2003-09-23 11:36 · Score: 3, Insightful

Inconvenient if you're trying to find which of 10 DVDs you put that episode of Futurama on
You don't need more on-line storage, you need a decent indexing program.