Replacement for Jewel Cases?

PsychoBrat asks: "I'm surrounded by jewel cases at work and at home, and although most of them are still holding together to some extent, a lot of them have either cracked fronts, broken hinges or snapped teeth. Slim cases generally annoy me because I can't tell them apart by looking at their spines, and wallets take too long to sort through. What do you use in place of the standard fragile jewel cases to keep all your discs organized?"

Comments

Paper Sleeves

[azrane2005]

I use different colored paper sleeves. Those packs of 50 in 5 colors from Memorex are great and disposable

as cheap as a piece of paper

[shack420]

http://www.papercdcase.com/images/cd.pdf Can knock em out in 30 seconds once you get the hang of it. Good for mailing and scratch protection, maybe not so great for rough environments.

Re:150 CD book

[jehdro]

Against jewel cases, books are an even trade or worse. Frequently-played CDs are doomed from the constant friction of being pulled in and out (despite the protective pits, dust and debris do get in and do some damage); not a lot of artists clearly label the CDs themselves these days; and if you actually fill one of those books they begin crumble under the weight of the CDs. I struggled with books vs. jewel cases vs. slim cases for years. The only viable solution I found was made by Apple and cost more than my stereo reciever.

A disc carousel

[agm]

A disc carousel?

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/04/21/imation_dis c_stakka/

Re:It Depends

[bergeron76]

For smaller CD arrays, we use a used CDR spindle. Once the CD's are gone, it makes for a nice holding area for discs. That said, don't put your only copy of your most valuable disc (which you shouldn't have... - ...[the single copy, that is]) on it. When seeking a disc, you just dump the discs into your hand and shuffle through them. It's not as efficient as a CD case, but it's the smallest form factor you can get.

86 the Jewel cases. Unless you're shipping a CD, or using it in some other light industrial environment (ex. a labeling requirement) they are crap.

Your best bet is to get a decent sized CD wallet, and just take the time to flip through the discs. Using a decent briefcase sized storage wallet, you can [humanly] "read" 8 discs per page turn. It really doesn't take that long to find a disc.

Spindles

[MikeDawg]

I have more spindles laying around my work and home than you can imagine. They are cheap and plentiful, and I have a million of them. The only bad side comes to the true organization of CDs. If you are somewhat good with "poor" organization, you can keep different CD/DVDs in different spindles.

Re:I feel your pain

[Calmiche]

Regarding # 2

I've actually taken this a step farther. I've pieced together a RAID 1 array, using an old computer, stuffed with a high powered power supply and lots of 400 gig harddrives. (They are cheap. Yes, I know there are bigger drives, but I can afford $150 out of a paycheck easier than $400+.) I have about 2 terabytes so far, but I figure that with PCI expansion cards, I can get up to almost 3 terabytes, with fairly secure data, easily. If you want to ommit the redundency, you can hit 6 terrabytes+.

I've got it hooked up on my LAN, where all my computers in my house can access it. I've ripped about half of my 300+ DVD collection so far using Nero Recode. I've got subtitles, alternate language tracks, and extras.

Coupled with a couple of fairly simple little sub $300 computers hooked up to my televisions, I've got access to my entire colletion anywhere in the house.

I've done the same thing with much of my software and CD's. (Daemon tools is your best friend!)

What's nice about this system is that it's cheap and you can buy in installments. The computer I use is a VERY low end system. All it has to have is the ability to network share. I've got an old Pentium Celeron at 1.0 ghz. Buy one hard drive and you are in business. As you need space, buy more. Hard drives are getting cheaper and more spacious every month.

I'm going to upgrage systems again and turn my current computer into a second server. Maybe then I'll get the rest of my DVD's ripped.

RAID is the solution.

[scum-e-bag]

I'm in the process of disposing of all my CDs as everything I need is safe on my RAID5 back-up server.

To find anything just required a quick search function. If the item is an audio CD ripped to FLAC then I que it up, if the item is an data CD then I mount the image file... My storage space has reduced from several large bookshelves full of CDs down to one small box... As for power consumption, I live in a cold sub-zero-celcius environment and any extra heating is welcome!!!

Re:RAID is the solution.

[networkBoy]

Pair of large HDDs placed in a banks safe deposit vault.
That's what I do, one drive is at home and once a month I rotate in the other drive.

Mind you I don't keep MP3s and AVIs on those drives, I keep family photos, scans of important documents, my wife's masters thesis and supporting material (last thing I want is to answer to her when hundreds of hours of work goes *poof*).
-nB

Better than RAID

[plover]

A friend of mine has a rack in his basement that has 48 SCSI CD-ROM drives mounted in it. He just keeps them all on-line 24x7. Never has to touch them!

Re:Better than RAID

[Wolfrider]

Interesting. I just created a Vmware virtual ISO/CD Server appliance that will share (21) ISOs as drives E -> Y out of the box. (Linux host and Win2k guest.)

He could copy all his stuff to HD, run mkisofs, turn off all the CDROMs, and save a bundle on electricity + wear and tear. :)

Build a cabinet

[eric76]

Back in the punch card days, you could buy cabinets with drawers that were made for storing punch cards. They were just the right size for punch cards and not much use for anything else but storing punch cards.

I've thought about building a cabinet for storing CDs along the same lines as the punch card cabinets. Build drawers that are just the right size to store jewel boxes.

Right now I just stack them up in file cabinets. A CD cabinet would be a whole lot better.

Re:Incredible

[iainl]

Not that they need to be Amaray ones. Personally, I prefer Alpha's locking mechanism, as I've had fewer discs pop out in the mail.

But yes, DVD cases are better than CD cases because the plastic isn't as brittle. They even make them at CD height, for those that don't like the "looks good on a bookshelf" thing.

DIY

[salec]

Slim cases generally annoy me because I can't tell them apart by looking at their spines,

You can colour-code them, using coloured stickers or permanent markers. Other thing that comes to my mind is to DIY a device similar to slide-projector feeder (in line, not drum) that prods up one case a time so that you can see that half-inch wide clear part of case that can hold a paper ribbon with info on it. That way you would operate the lever and vrrrr, fast browse thru them (it is assumed that holder is horizontal, i.e. in a drawer ). Or, even simpler, if the rack is made such that it could be tilted back (or if bottom of the back of rack could be pulled forward so that only the back is tilted), to force cases form a staircase, you could see them all at once.

Re:Spindles -are- great, just get organized

[toleraen]

I do something similar...I use multiple DVD spindles to hold movies/tv seasons, but I just keep them in alphabetical order. I made up a spreadsheet with a listing of all the movies I've got, followed by sections for location (dvd rack for retail, spindles for uhhh movies without cases, cabinets for VHS), format (actual dvd, divx, etc), then genre and sub-genres. So when I want to watch a comedy, just use the auto-filter deal in excel to show only comedy movies.

This way saves on digging through spindles which saves some disk wear and tear trying to remember what you've got. It also gives you a nice way to inventory your movies (no more "I swear I had that movie"), and if you let a friend borrow a movie, you can mark down who has it. Great for sending to a friend if you want to swap movies for the weekend too.

ironic solution

[yagu]

It's kind of surprising, but the cost of storage per disc can be less by storing them in a carousel cd-changer than in any shelf designed to hold cds (or any other shelf for that matter). For a long time I had two, both capable of holding 400+ discs. Each player cost less than $250, and for shelves capable of holding that many cds I found those to be typically more expensive. Kind of weird, but true.

And, even though you may not be playing discs anymore (assuming you tote your music around as mp3 or some other non-cd format), these carousel players typically support display information about each disk (though mine required typing the info in via a keyboard), so you can easily get to specific discs.

I don't know if these changers are still made, but I'm betting you can find them on ebay for an even better price anyway.

Re:150 CD book

[Odin_Tiger]

I used to use one of these. Unfortunately, in high temperatures (say, left uncovered in the car in ~65f outside temps in the sun) the backing screws up the CD's. I've seen this several times from lots of different folks. Get a hard plastic case or a case entirely cloth instead.

This may sound like spam but....

[bigmike_f]

I used to work for a company called Discgear. This is what they were really good at. Try looking at their selector 100 FX. http://www.discgear.com/

USB CD Carousel

[sergent]

http://www.i4u.com/article2485.html

USB CD Carousel

USB CD Carousel
For people who have to many CDs lying around the USB CD Carousel might be the solution.

The device manages up to 150 CDs. The Carousel can spit out a CD via the desktop software or the keypad on the CD Carousel. Multiple CD Carousels can be hooked up together.
There are two models available. The newer one has a keypad and a USB hub built-in.