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CD Storage Advice?
An anonymous reader asks: "I'm up to my ears in CDs! Driver discs, games, software, music, data backups, you name it. Right now they're all stashed in various jewel cases and sleeves, and dumped into boxes in my closet. What's the best way to sort and store them? I bought a 128-disc storage binder, but once it filled, it tore apart from the weight. Any ideas? Does anyone make large-capacity binders that are sturdier than the average stuff you'd find at a Best Buy? What do you use?"
Living in a colege dorm I have to be really concearned about keepiing all my disk organized and not taking up too much room. I have a 360 capacity binder I use for my DVDs, a 280 binder I use for TV Shows, a 240 binder for games, and a 128 binder for drivers. I suggest looking on ebay for binder this size becasue retail places will just rip you off
Don't you hate pants?
I use those 100 CDR stack spindles that media come in. People at the office never re-use them, so I just grab'em, take'em home, and stack my media on them. Makes in a little of a pain to find stuff, but I use little bits of sticky notes to index major sections (OSs, Windows drivers, games, etc).
It's not ideal, but it works better than anything else I've found to date.
Here's my suggestion:
Most CDs that I get, like drivers or even most software, don't take up the full space, nor do they have any copy-protection. I would highly recommend getting a program like DAEMON Tools (which last I checked was free), and use another tool, whether an ISO maker like WinISO or similar, or Nero, or something open-source, to make images of the files.
A lot of them will be under 200 MB, and so you could easily stuff a ton of them on a 4.7 GB DVD.
Before proceeding, especially with drivers, make sure you have the latest version, if you're going to bother. No point in backing up a 3 year old CD to DVD if the downloadable drivers are newer.
Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
I taped togther a box for my discs. I put a cardboard separator in to make a few rows, and put in paper bookmarks to denote sections (music CDs, Live CDs, DVDs, etc.). Even a small box will hold a few hundred discs, and unlike with a spindle, you don't have to remove the ones on the top to get to the ones on the bottom.
In my experience, CD binders are a major cause of disc surface scratching, despite the "padded" sleeves most offer. Jewel cases really are the best way to preserve them, but I've found that the best alternative for compact storage are rolodex-type CD organizers. Discgear makes the one I use and it holds 100 discs in approximately 18"x6"x6". The added bonus is you never have to flip through a ton of pages to find anything, you just have to make a one-time spreadsheet assigning a number to each disc you own. I guess if you had 200+ it could be annoying to have multiple of these, but there may be others with larger capacity. For me, the preservation properties alone make it worthwhile.
In Soviet Russia, all our base are belong to you!
Most driver CD's and such only take up a small portion of the disc.
I normally take as many of them as I can, copy the files over to my hard drive in a folder. Remove any IE install folders or Quicktime, or Direct X. Then once you reach 700 MB Burn it to a disc.
Store the original disc in a box who cares about it anymore, you could probably throw it away. (Not to mention most drivers can be gotten from the internet in a more up to date version anyways). And then write all the things on the compilation CD on its label.
Keep your compilation CD's stored in a good CD case.
I make copies of all my CDs, and leave the originals in the jewel case at home on a bookshelf. I don't bother to index them because I rarely look for one in that mess.
I keep the copies in small binders (I like the 72 disk ones, which work for me) in the car. I keep an assortment in each, and just take one binder at a time. It might not always have the exact disk I'm looking for when I want a particular one, but normally I just want music so it doesn't matter so long as there is a variety.
I have a 60 disk changer for my music in the living room. Not enough, but still useful, I just stock it with my long term favorites and live with the selection. (I don't use that stereo much so it isn't too big a deal)
I'm considering ripping everything to a server, and sharing things, but so far I haven't bothered. Still I dream of a nice box on my stereo that will play any of my music. (I even bought one once, but I returned it after I read the software license agreement)
I run only FreeBSD so all my software comes from ports. If I loose it I just download a new copy from the net. Someplace I have a few OS/2 programs on a shelf somewhere, though I'd be surprised if they were still readable.
I don't own a TV, I recommend you throw yours away too. If you are not willing for that (which is nearly everyone) I can't help you, though some of the above ideas might apply somehow.
What is Masking tape.
Seriously , i have a holder i made entierly of masking tape .
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Allsop has a ton of robust cd storage, check out the cd albums and disc storage boxes. Might not be in the quantity you want, but at least they look better than that black cd case you're using now.
Get a better binder. A good product shouldn't become ruined simply because you filled it to capacity.
Stay away from Best Buy. Most of their accessories are pure crap.
But since you bought it from Best Buy, did you buy the $39.99 annual replacement policy?
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Then quit your bitching about shit, you little slut
Recently 120 Drives were $49 CDN ($38 US). Bought that + a USB case for media backups (music and movies).
Nice thing is with Linux - Ubuntu/Debian - you only ever really need 1 cd and can download everything else you need with apt get.
For proprietary software I use the white paper cd cases and a CD box I got from ikea. Holds 150+ CDs/DVDs. Spindles are more likely to scratch a DVD/CD.
Go to a computer show or scour the Internet for a shop selling bulk CD binder inserts. I know newegg has 25 packs for not much (25 * 8 = 200 total) but you'll probably want to get them in much larger quantities.
Next go to your local evil^H^H^H^H^H Wallmart and pick up some cheap binders. I found a few 2-inchers with nice straps and velcro for $3. I picked up a few in different colors, each holding about 200 discs.
Works perfect for drivers, games, music, netflix backups, software, or anything else round and flat.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Other people have good ideas.
But I'd suggest step one is to simplify your life; if you're at all like me, you don't need all those CDs. I don't even mean in the "if you're not careful, your possessions possess you" sense (although if you want to go that route, that can help too), I mean in the "drivers for the motherboard two motherboards ago that went up in smoke" or "drivers for my nVidia Riva 128 that even if I installed in a system again I'd just download" or "free trial version crap included in a box of Cheerios".
I was beginning to have this problem too, but lo, I cleaned out my CDs, wasn't even too aggressive about it, and lo, well over half of the CD-ROMs were garbage and suddenly I didn't have a problem anymore.
Obviously, this doesn't apply to music CDs, but this can help with the CD-ROM problem.
(If you've already done this, then consider this advice for others.)
My advice to you would be to convert your archives to DVD. If keeping them in 650/700MB cd format is important, make .iso images of the CD's and save a few of them on the DVD and use something like daemon tools or alcohol 120% to mount the iso's as you need them. The conversion alone should save you at LEAST 5 times the number of disc's.
Take a deep breath and throw most of them out... Most of your stuff (drivers etc) can be redownloaded and once your data hits CDs most of them will never be put into your CD-drive again...
sigfault. comment dumped.
http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductsList.asp?Name=cd+cas e
It is basically a large metal case, quite hard to destroy and has single inserts for each disc.
I would highly recommend it, I have many friends who use these for when they are doing dj'ing at clubs to take their music collection on the road.
Kind regards
My advice is basically to not have so many freakin' CDs.
Seriously, unless you're starting some kind of kitchy museum, you really don't need to keep all of that stuff.
Drivers? Get on the web, download the latest versions of everything, put them all on one CD. I guarantee that there is nothing else on those driver disks that's worth keeping.
Games/Movies? Trust me, you do not need too keep every single one you ever purchased. I know it's tempting to keep them "just in case", but that case will never come. Sell them used or give them away. If it's in your closet now it can't be that worth keeping.
Backups? Who are you kidding? I can't think of many scenarios where an individuals vital data would take up more than a handful of CDs or one DVD. There is some stuff that just isn't worth the hassle of backing up like that. If you've got a bunch of ripped music or something just mirror it onto an external hard disk.
I say this as a reformed packrat.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
make art work, or send them to aol. most of them are useless. or, just buy a couple of nice binders that wont rip. can we get a real ask slashdot please ?
Like you I keep all of my original safe at home in the original jewel case. I ripped all of my CDs to FLAC using abcde (download it if it is not in ports it is only a shell script). FLAC is lossless so you will never have to rip your CDs when a better audio compression comes out. And it is simple to transcode FLAC to a more portable format like ogg:vorbis. All of the music is ripped and stored on a headless silent computer connected to my stereo. I control audio playback with Music Player Daemon. I also share the FLAC files (readonly) so that I can easily burn CDs and transcode from my workstation.
Things to watch out for: Some sound cards suck, most clip at higher volumes. When ripping CDs the various cddb sources are wrong as often as the data is correct. Verify all cddb results before ripping. The exception is the genre tag. That is almost always wrong. I strip the tag after ripping. For some reason one person's polka is another person's alternative.
If you care about how your music sounds (and you have to use the analog out), don't use onboard sound.....
4 words that will help:
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz.
Comp-usa stopped stocking these cards on the shelves in my local store. They went for around 50$ before any rebates the last time I checked.
I'm sure there are other cards out there that will fit the "low noise, no clipping" sound card category, but this is one card that I am very very impressed with. If they start to go out of production, I'll probably buy a few to put in some of my other machines.
Another cheaper alternative; I got a SB Live 5.1 oem card from someone..... it's relatively decent on the output stages as well.
Karnal
I picked up one of these Discgear things at a local discount store and it's been working pretty well.
i have two sets of shelves.
l
Each set looks like the old style library card files? Each has 6 drawers stacked vertically and can hold roughly 11 cd's in standard Jewel cases, 25 of the slim cases.
so in just under 4 feet high each can hold between 66 and 150 cd's.
It's similar in design to to this
http://www.pinewoodstudio.co.uk/vp054cd.htm
though mine isn't made of pine but maple.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
On a shelf. They don't really take up a whole lot of space if you use shelves that are properly small. Not portable, but you can find stuff a LOT faster than any other storage method.
/usr/games/fortune
I say this as a reformed packrat.
Which reminds me. Watch ten episodes of the show Clean Sweep. While not a masterpiece of reality television, I do have to say it is one of the shows that has personally impacted me and my priorities the most. In that sense it's probably one of the best shows ever on television, even though it suprises me to type that, as few shows ever manage that.
It helps, a lot; even if you don't do everything, which you probably shouldn't unless your house looks like one you see on the show, it will still give you a lot of good ideas and a new way to look at your crap.
The one that speaks the most to me, especially as a engineer type, is discounting the value of your stuff against the odds of using it in the future, and not neglecting how a lot of little things add up to a big thing. If you have a huge "box of stuff" that you might use in the future like misc. electronics or screws or whatever, but, realistically, you can only expect to use three or four things out of it in the next twenty years, unless these things are immensely valuable, you should either sell or toss the entire collection, because the cost of storage (both in real costs, moving costs, and opportunity costs due to the lost space) swamp the value of the gee-gaws. (Even better is if you can sort through the junk and pluck out, with reasonable confidence, the six or seven things you have a high probability of using and toss the rest; I've collapsed a big pile down to about three parts that way, and so far, I've missed nothing I threw out and used two of the three parts. Your ability to reasonably guess is probably better than you think.)
It's a very powerful economic argument.
While perhaps not directly on topic, it's certainly related; for instance, while I tend to keep all my music CDs (as I use a lot of my collection very often since it's all mp3/ogg now, and I'm legally obligated to keep the CDs), I will fairly often sort through the movies semi-aggressively, and barring the recent expansion caused by purchasing TV series, we have kept a fairly constant amount of space dedicated to movies over the years, even accounting for the fact that we are more careful only to buy things that we expect to want to see enough times to make it worth it. Your milage with music CDs may vary; my purchasing habits with them are fairly conservative so I know I'll like what I'm spending $15 on. (Were they cheaper I might have more to throw out.)
I bought four 220 disc holders last month that seem pretty good, from supermediastore.com (I am in no way affiliated with them.) They have a carrying strap and they zip closed.
This space available.
For each system i've built for friends and family lately i've gotten an expanding file for all their manuals and docs and shit, and a .97 12-CD case for all their driver disks, and tuck it in teh back pocket of the expanding file. Makes it nice for me when i go to work on stuff and need a disc or manual, i know where they are and they won't lose the damned things either. The binders i bought were bright colors too, so it would either be easy to spot, or easy to remember where they hid it. This system worked so good i went to it at home, since i never use driver discs but want to keep them around JIC, i use cheap binders and keep all my docs and discs for each system together. For my core of software discs i have an alstop steel case binder sitting on my desk that has a ton of stuff stacked on it now, doesn't mind the abuse. It came with 12 sleeves but i have about 15 in it and it doesn't mind. I have several 50 Disc spindles in the closet, some full of AOL discs (frisbee parties, coasters, whatever i need'em for) some full of old music CD-Rs i've burnt over the years. In my toolbox i have one of those visor CD holders with copies of WinXP, Win98 Win2000 a linux boot disc and a semi-up-to-date compilation of troubleshooting and fix-it software.
If you look in the rubbermaid tote section of walmart they have some fliptop boxes that are made for jewel cases and others that are made for DVDs. I have one cd box i use for my game cases (the games are in a binder somewhere around here...) and several DVD boxes i use to keep all my DVDs contained (but i always end up with a large stack on my desk...).
Anyway, there is no RIGHT way to do this, i've found. It either works for you, or it doesn't, end of story. PLay around til you come up with a system that works for ya, and go from there.
Why not consolidate those CDs on DVD+/-Rs?
Even if you're worried about the life span of a DVD+/-R compared to a pressed CD, making two copies, with one stored in a dark, dry place would still save a LOT of room.
http://cyberguys.com/Cyberguys has a couple cd carousels in their magazine that are stackable, and can be controlled from your computer using some software to keep track of where the CDs are. You can also use the keypad on the front to access the CD. We used these at one place i worked at and they seemed pretty nice. We had a binder there with a listing of the CDs aswell so you didnt have to bother with the computer. I am thinking about getting some of these for the same reason. They each hold 150 discs and automatically eject the disc you select...
For individual things that need to be accessed frequently or given to people, use those really thin plastic sleeves. They're about 1000 for 10 dollars, and they don't take up much more room than the CD themselves. Whenever I have CD's to deal with, they wind up in a little pile of sleeves somewhere.
For things that can be logically grouped together, use binders. I've come across some crappy binders like yours which have broken near maximum capacity, but I've also got several that have lasted for years and years. The key is that the main company who sells binders, and who has somehow gotten a stranglehold on most of the retail market (you know who I'm talking about) makes crap. The offbrands in this case seem to perform significantly better. I've got about as many computer CD's in my three binders as my roommate has music CD's in her 4' by 6' shelf.
And for a lot of things, throw them out. As other people have pointed out, you don't need the drivers that came with all of the little pieces of hardware you own. You are most likely to need to reinstall drivers when you're updating OS's, and at that point the drivers will be inherently out of date anyway. Anything you personally have burned to CD is suspect, as either A: you didn't want it enough to keep it on your main PC and B: chances are you downloaded it anyway.
For any games you haven't played in a year, write down your serial number and throw out the CD. If you ever want to play them again, download the game.
As for DVD movies... stop buying so many movies! Movie purchases serve two functions. 1. If a movie is really, really good you can watch it every day. This happens to most people a few times in their lives, but ultimately most movies aren't so much better than other movies that they're worth seeing more than once or twice. You've seen these movies at least 5 times, and are likely to again. 2. It's iconic. It allows you to associate yourself with that movie and vice-versa, supporting them at the same time as showing other people your tastes. Ultimately, though, the prospect of spending 20 dollars for a movie that you could rent for 3 is a losing prospect most of the time, especially as a lot of purchased DVD's don't get watched more than once or twice. Divide your collection into things that fit into the first category, things that fit into the second category, and things that don't fit into either category. Category 1 should be kept in a handy binder, near your DVD playback device. Category 2 "might" go back on your shelf in the original container, but only if you don't already have symbols of that movie up and around. Otherwise if it is a sharable movie put it in the binder, or just get rid of it. Having the alien trilogy around gets you no more subculture cred than having candles: They're great but everyone has them anyway. Movies that don't fit into either of these categories should be roundly dumped.
You can't keep everything. Liner notes go. Boxes go. The experience is what it is all about, but experiences are transient. Let the disks die.
The ______ Agenda
When it comes to data CD's with drivers, etc. I just am not able to convince myself to get rid of them, so I went to and downloaded DiskTracker. It is MacOS X only, but it is an awesome application. There is probably something similar for Windows (Check Versiontracker).
After installing Disktracker I made sure that it serializes each CD with a simple number 1,2,3,etc. and bought some CD Binders (Fellowes seem to be sturdy enough). Now I am in the process of:
- Insert CD
- Let Disktracker catalog it
- Eject CD
- Write Serial Number on it with Sharpie Marker
- Insert into Binder
- When Binder is full write on outside something like 0001-0128
- Repeat ad naseum
:)
The System seems to work pretty good. Now when I need any particular file, I just open up disktracker, search for it using the built-in search function and then find out what CD number it is on. I open the proper binder, take out the CD and use it, then return it to its proper place.I have probably another 750-1000 CD's to go, but they now take up significantly less space and that in itself is worth the time I spend cataloging them.
+(norad) if you rearrange the letters in mother in law, you get woman hitler
I really struggled with this for a long time. My final solution was to buy a regular bookshelf, and then went to Lowes and had even more shelves made for it. I buy jewel cases for every CD worth keeping. If it doesnt rank spending 10 cents on a jewel case, I throw it out. At the same time I did all this, I bought a labeling kit, and printed labels for all of the burned CDs. The labels cause the burned ones to last much longer, as they protect the top side of the disk, which is the much more easily damamged side.
When I was all done, I am able to store between 600 and 700 CDs on the book case. Most of them are music, so I put those in alphabetic order. Software gets sorted by type, and DVDs and games just kindof go wherever. People laugh when they see the bookcase completely full, but I think most people dont realize how much media we have now.
-- the computer doesn't want any beer, no matter how much you think it does. NEVER, EVER feed your computer beer.
Drivers? Get on the web, download the latest versions of everything, put them all on one CD. I guarantee that there is nothing else on those driver disks that's worth keeping.
Great, unless you can't find it on the web when you need it. Or you need a newer version since you upgraded some software, or you need an older version than the one you did burn, or you can't install just the driver without having the super-duper-install-drivers and-tons-of-crap-you-don't-need CD.
Games/Movies? Trust me, you do not need too keep every single one you ever purchased. I know it's tempting to keep them "just in case", but that case will never come. Sell them used or give them away. If it's in your closet now it can't be that worth keeping.
What? And jettison my 400 SVCD collection of my former VHS collection of crappy sci-fi movies?!? Why, just yesterday I watched episode 3 of Space:1999 ("Black Sun"), and I liked it!
Backups? Who are you kidding? I can't think of many scenarios where an individuals vital data would take up more than a handful of CDs or one DVD. There is some stuff that just isn't worth the hassle of backing up like that. If you've got a bunch of ripped music or something just mirror it onto an external hard disk.
I can back up everything important on one CD. It's much easier to do a full backup once a week than to do an incremental backup since I don't have any backup software to figure out which of the 8,000 files changed. Some of us work from home and might just need to grab some file from a month ago.
I say this as a reformed packrat.
You've lost your edge. What happens when you need that PDP-11 you just threw away? That 300 Baud acoustic modem? Moebius for the Amiga? That Video Toaster you swore you'd use to make a short film? A spare A1000 for parts? Need to make a Mac SE fishtank, but threw away the half dozen (still working) Macs? I've got all those and more, just waiting for the moment they're desperately needed!
I say this as a true packrat: Keep packing and ratting until it's not safe to open the door to your storage area. Then go rent another one.
Here come da fudge!
With all the store bought and burned stuff that I've amassed throughout the years, it's the only thing I have that will contain it all without collapsing.
And toss out years worth of pr0n? No way!
I think the author was refering to data cds but regular shelves work better for music too. I hate specialized cd racks because double albums and cds with non-standard packaging won't fit in the stupid little slots.
Of course, the drawback is that bookcase is a full-fledged piece of furniture and therfore takes up a fair amount of room (but its probable better than filling your closet).
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
CD3
smile, it makes everyone else wonder what you're up to
Maximum burn is worth a listen. A good pdf is there too. CD-Rs don't last. But a few tips can make them last a bit longer.
At less than 50 cents per gigabyte, you can store a lot of stuff on hard drives quite inexpensively, and storage prices are only going to drop.
I rip CDs, both audio and data, and store the ISOs on hard drives. For $90 you can get a 200GB drive, that's enough room to store 285 full CD images, uncompressed. In practice, most CDs aren't full, and most of them can be compressed quite a bit, so in reality one 200GB drive can hold around a thousand CDs.
For audio, I rip and Vorbis-encode them to roughly 256 kbps, which mashes a typical album down to about 90MB without losing any quality I'm ever going to have equipment to hear. At that rate, even a *huge* audio collection will fit on one 200GB drive. I actually do keep the originals of audio CDs, but storing them is much easier if you expect never to have to find them. I recommend using a relative's basement. (Plug: If you run Linux or a BSD, check into madman; it's an awesome music manager).
For data, I rip the ISOs using 'dd' and then loop mount them when I need them. On Windows you can use any of various rippers and mount them on a virtual CD-ROM drive with Daemon Tools.
If I need to take CDs with me, I usually either keep the ISOs on my laptop hard drive, or if drive space is getting tight I burn them to a DVD. For example, although I run Linux/*BSD exclusively, I occasionally need Windows or Windows apps (under VMWare), so I have a DVD labeled "Microsoft Stuff" that contains CD ISOs for Win2K, Office, Visio, MS Project, Visual C++, etc.
For those few times when it's more convenient to have an actual CD, rather than just an image, my laptop has a CD burner, my desktop has a DVD burner, my wife's laptop has a CD burner, my kids' desktop has a CD burner... you get the idea. I usually carry a small number of CD-Rs with me so I can just burn what I need when I need it. When I'm done, I label the CD (with a Sharpie marker) and hold onto it for a while on the theory that I might need it again soon, but as soon as they start to pile up I just trash the whole pile. I don't worry about the cost of the CD-Rs because I've got several hundred disks that I got for "free" (mail-in rebate >= sale price). It does sometimes seem wasteful to treat CDs as disposable, but mostly I manage to avoid needing them at all, so it's not so bad.
I've even begun moving a large part of my movie collection to hard disks. I use mythtv's transcoding daemon to automagically rip and recompress DVD movies and I'm working on using my Mini-DV camera to convert VHS movies to DV and then transcoding them to MPEG-4. I really only do this with the kids' movies, because I notice the compression artifacts, slight as they are. Each movie compresses to between 1 and 2 GB, so I can store around 120 of them on one 200GB drive. That's a lot cheaper than re-buying DVDs that my three year-old has trashed. This way the kids have a nice menu of movies to pick from without ever touching a disk.
As storage sizes continue to increase, I plan to eventually put all of our VHS and DVD collection on my server. I'll probably have to keep disks around for a while when we start getting real HD content on Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, but I imagine storage sizes will eventually increase to where ripping those is economical as well.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I use paper CD sleeves and boxes specifically designed to the dimensions of CDs. I bought some metal boxes at Staples that are designed for this purpose, but the soldering of the edges is a little rough, so I just put a jewel case at each end of the box, to cover up the rough edges. The boxes are about 8 inches long, I figure I get about 250 DVDs in a box, I haven't counted.
I wish I could find Tyvek sleeves, but nobody seems to sell em anymore, they might take fractionally less space than paper, they're thinner. Sleeves are about the most storage per linear inch you can get except storing naked media on spindles, I prefer to have a little more protection, so when I go through the stack looking for a disc, they don't get scratched up. Binders take up too much room, and tend to scratch up the CDs sliding in and out of the binder pages.
i used to have a friend that DJed as well, and he used something very similar to these. he had at least a thousand CDs, mostly stuff that was burned or came with a paper CD holder, and he loved these.
Shoe stores will give you the dehumidifier packets from the shoe boxes, without charge. Keep your CDs dry.
Great, unless you can't find it on the web when you need it. Or you need a newer version since you upgraded some software, or you need an older version than the one you did burn, or you can't install just the driver without having the super-duper-install-drivers and-tons-of-crap-you-don't-need CD.
You are totally missing the point. The parent said to get all the latest versions of the drivers off the web and burn them to one CD. There is no need to keep 15 CDs around for 15 piceces of hardware when the drivers only take 20MB or less on each CD.
I can back up everything important on one CD. It's much easier to do a full backup once a week than to do an incremental backup since I don't have any backup software to figure out which of the 8,000 files changed. Some of us work from home and might just need to grab some file from a month ago.
So you can back up everything on one CD - fantastic! So, why do you ever need more than 2 backup CDRWs then? One for current backup, one for the last one. If everything you need to back up fit son one CD, you don't need to keep a stockpile of old backups around.
What? And jettison my 400 SVCD collection of my former VHS collection of crappy sci-fi movies?!? Why, just yesterday I watched episode 3 of Space:1999 ("Black Sun"), and I liked it!
You need to look at this logically. Assuming you are an averagely busy person who has time to watch 2-3 movies a week, if you have a 400 SVCD collection of movies, even assuming that you watched only those movies for an entire year, the odds of you watching any given one of those movies is less than 0.5%. Assuming you do other things than watch crappy old movies (like watch crappy new ones), your eyes will probbaly never even look at 75% of that colleciton for your whole life.
Go through them, pick out your true favorites, toss the rest. You will thank yourself later when your GF stops calling your place a hellhole and starts spending time there.
These sleeves, and a plastic 2-drawer CD storage thingy that they don't seem to make anymore. IKEA still makes CD storage boxes, they're reasonably cheap ($5/pair). They don't hold that many (23) if you use the jewel cases, but using the sleeves doubles or tripples the storage.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
I use the binders from CL that hold 90 or so CDs per volume. They store neatly on a book shelf and aren't unwieldy when full. Software keys printed with a label maker go on the CD if it is an installation CD.
Ask me about my vow of silence!
I'm moving soon and I want to really cut down on clutter. I'm getting rid of at least a couple hundred CDs, but I'd like to do something better with the ones I keep too. The jewel cases really do take up alot of room....
Anyone know of any good binders or other storage systems that can deal with CDs and their inserts and tray cards? Maybe a certain type of clear plastic baggie and appropriately-sized filer boxes? Folding the tray cards up and stuffing them in to a regular CD binder is not an option.
Any ideas welcome.
Cheers,
Vic
...or you only have to find somewhere else for the case. I pile CD towers on top of furniture, and I burn data backups to DL-DVD. For a while I had a source for normal-sized CD cases that could store 4 discs, but it dried up. Still got a bunch though.
Actually, I mirror everything I need to back up to two other disks, one of them at another site. Some things really are priceless, like photographs of the family. Not to mention if you keep stuff floating around long enough actively keepin stuff around can make it last longer than your backup medium (assuming you keep moving your data onto each new hard drive as you buy them).
A link to the same idea: http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/amiga.html
Remember those old 5 and a quarter discs? You should be able to find boxes of the stuff anywhere...replace the discs with CDs.
You are entitled to own copies of all those TV shows and the games are originals yes ? ;-)
I've got a shelf full of CaseLogic and Fellowes 100CD binders - in my closet. Each has a pair of slots, for CD and art, so can actually hold 200CDs, without breaking under the strain. Most of my 2500 CDs are audio (CDDA); only a hundred or so are data (ISO9660). I converted all my audio CDs to WAV (DAE to FLAC), and copied the data CDs into mountable images. So now my 2500 CDs fit on 3 250GB EIDE HDs in a PIII/850 server tower: $600 is $0.24:CD, with room for 3-500 more, at no extra cost. It helped that I used a $1000 PowerFile CD-ROM jukebox, with the Linux mtx and some custom scanning/DB-population SW I wrote, so scanning didn't drive me insane over a few months. Now I can do whatever I want with my CDs, freed from theit physical media, and I've got backups safely in the closet.
--
make install -not war
I've had really good experience with CD cabinets from Can-Am http://www.can-am.ca/ They are a bit pricey but very sturdy and reliable. And they are stackable too.
Yes, Wallpaper to hold your CDs.
Even your door can hold some!
Video Production Support
I use CD Drums. They each hold 100 discs, and make getting to a single disk a lot easier than by using spindles. I think it also protects individual disks better from scratches than spindles do.
Just search amazon for 'CD Drum' to see what I'm talking about.
The ones that I use have these detachable CD sleeves that each hold 2 discs. They can clip in and out of the cd drums. The drums came with CD wallets that have the same clips, which makes taking just a portion of your collection around pretty easy.
The only thing is, once you have a good physical storage system for your dics, you may get so many of them that you need a cataloging system to remember how to locate your stuff. I actually ended up writing my own, as I couldn't find anything out there that met my needs. For example, I wanted to be able to recursively scan archive files.
I'd be interested to hear if there's any anything out there that people use for cataloging their stuff.
I have a 250 CD binder that I call my black book. It's known throughout the area to contain a lot of... let's say stuff. Hah. It's almost full of CDs that I've bought in spindles. Other than that, I have other CD binders that hold other things... such as one that holds backed up DVDs, and another that holds caseless games and music CDs. I can hold 20 CDs inside jewel cases above my monitor on my desk. And for the other games and such in cases, I have this big turning rack that I'd say can hold about 400 CDs -- it's really nice. But I do feel you in having a ton of CDs... I'm just pretty organized about it surprisingly.
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
All for under 200$ - in fact, you can find some of the USB disc jukeboxes for around 60$ if you're lucky.
;)
:)
They hold 100 discs on 'nearline' storage- except the robot that loads them is you
Each disk gets cataloged with cdstoragemaster and then manually added to the nearline catalog. You push the disk into the jukebox, it confirms the name of the disk, it spins, and you're set.
Can't find a file you're looking for? search for it, get the disk name, eject the disk with the file, put it in the drive, and you're now looking at a live disk.
I do this with every image I take on my Canon 10D- 15,000 in total so far- 1 copy for the Juke, 1 copy for a spindle, and 2 copies for different harddrives.
More details available upon request
I've got a 1000 CD DJ flight case to store all my discs in - it's about the size of a large suitcase, and nearly indestructable.
Here are the tips of the Digital Data Preservation Program from the north-american National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Try jewelsleeve. "Stores every part of the CD. No more cutting up the artwork or discarding the tray card. Store all the original parts of the CD together."
In respect to those who have commented that everyone should throw away their old driver disks - consider the chicken and egg internet/driver situation. You are doing an OS [re-]install have an obscure modem or ethernet card (i.e. your primary means of connecting to the net) and no way of getting to the drivers from the net! Not funny when it happens (luckily most of us have more than 1 pc - and so can burn a disc with the drivers on very quickly).
Billy bookcases from Ikea are great for this, or any tall bookcase. The problem with other storage solutions is they are for "average" users. The biggest cd case/container I've seen are for 1000 or 1500. That doesnt begin to cover some cd collections I've seen. To maximize the space you've got to go higher, so get a tall bookcase. The one I bought from Ikea holds 1440 cds for under $100.
remember when it was {of|for|by} the people?
I've tried a bunch of things over the years, but my favorite for CDs that originally came in a standard jewel box is discsox. The allow me to store lots more CDs in a given volume and still keep the original inserts handy.
For other stuff, e.g. backups, I tend to stack 'em on spindles. For example, I've just finished ripping my audio CD collections to FLAC/CUE images, which I have burned to DVR+R, so my 750+ CD collection is now losslessly backed up to just over 50 DVD+Rs kept on a spindle.
BI've also used CD Projects (now made by Targus), with mixed, though usually negative, results. One of them fell apart, as you experienced (128 CD is heavy and the plastic could not hold it. More importantly, a few of my CDs were scratched to the point of unusability. It seems that particles can get stuck on the label side of the CD and ruin the disc. This happened to 2 of the CD Projects binders I have. The only one it didn't happen to is the one I only use for storage (very little access).
My experience is that if you use the binder often (transporting them from work to home), they (no matter the brand) will fall apart and may scratch the discs. If just used for storage, I would recommend Case Logic.
But, to reiterate what others have said, my CD binders receive a lot less wear and tear now that I put my music on an external hard drive. I have access to all my music and no longer have to deal with handling the CDs, which is where most of the wear and tear occurs.
So you can back up everything on one CD - fantastic! So, why do you ever need more than 2 backup CDRWs then? One for current backup, one for the last one. If everything you need to back up fit son one CD, you don't need to keep a stockpile of old backups around.
First, I don't keep every single document or project that I've ever worked on in my life on the computer. At some point, I dump "Project X" off the hard drive and the last CD containing that project is marked as such. I don't trust CDRWs to last more than a few dozen rewrites, as I've had a few suffer data integrity losses. I'll stick with the phthalocyanine CD-Rs and use the gold for terminal projects and digital photography work. At some point I destroy CDR backups without any important terminal project on it. Usually around spring cleaning.
Assuming you are an averagely busy person who has time to watch 2-3 movies a week, if you have a 400 SVCD collection of movies, even assuming that you watched only those movies for an entire year, the odds of you watching any given one of those movies is less than 0.5%. Assuming you do other things than watch crappy old movies (like watch crappy new ones), your eyes will probbaly never even look at 75% of that colleciton for your whole life.
I believe that certain things should be saved for posterity. If that means that I have to have 5, 6,..., 20? CD books full of movies, then so be it. Don't come crying to me when you want to see Tom Baker as the Doctor, or your favorite My Favorite Martian episode.
Go through them, pick out your true favorites, toss the rest. You will thank yourself later when your GF stops calling your place a hellhole and starts spending time there.
Contrary to popular belief, being a packrat does not imply that you live in a house with stacks of newspaper up to the ceiling. And the wife doesn't know about the GF, so *shhh*.
Here come da fudge!
Maybe it isn't a concern for whatever personal data you are accumulating and backing up once a week, but for me, losing any of the photos I shot with my digital camera is usually an irrecoverable loss. That's why I back them up on a second hard drive on another computer after every dump from my camera's memory card. Now that I think about it though, I've been lax in off-site backups. Time to warm up that CDR drive.
"To invent you need imagination and a pile of junk"
T. Eddison
Freedom or George Bush
raid array? hehe 7Tb of space to fuil with your pr0n and drivers.
I have a partition on my HD, its the same size as as a CDROM. I keep all my relevant documents and information on that partition. Its very easy to simply burn a copy of the partition to CD periodically. Restoring it from CD is also just as simple. Thats only good for personal documents mind you.
However, the same thing could be applied to using a DvD for applications software. Make a partition the size of a DvD (4.7Gb or whatever) and copy all the driver files, application files etc that can easily take from CD, leaving only the major applications on physical CDs. Burn a copy of the partition to a DvD and get rid of the excess CDs. I don't currently do this myself, although I do have a partition that contains all my archives and could easily do so (and might just do it now that I think of it).
Again restoring this or moving to another HD is a piece of cake, one burn to backup and one read to install after recreating the partition. A DvD will as people pointed out, hold a *lot* of drivers and applications.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Give this a shot:
s p?T1=134+1370&dept=lch8&search=1ds40&child=
s p?T1=134+1360&dept=&search=&child=
http://www.cyberguys.com/templates/searchdetail.a
or the less expensive:
http://www.cyberguys.com/templates/searchdetail.a