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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?"
they make cases for these things?!?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Get one of those nylon cloth book with a thick spline and over 150 plastic pocketed pages that holds 8 CDs each in plain view.
100 Capacity CD-R spindles for the cheap guys, and the huge super-100 capacity cd/dvd binders. You can get a nice binder for $15 these days. Both ways are very efficient and save much more space than jewel cases.
We are but a pixel in the JPEG of life.
Do away with physical storage beyond backups of your library... Ok, thats a little facetious; but it *is* the solution I selected.
As an aside, where the hell did the name "jewel case" come from. Its cheap arse polystyrene with some coloured paper and a lump of polycarbonate and aluminium inside. There is nothing even vaguely jewel-like about it?!!?
err!
jak.
I use different colored paper sleeves. Those packs of 50 in 5 colors from Memorex are great and disposable
Use CD cases for CDs, and jewel cases for jewels.
what it's for. If it's DVDs for the kids it goes in a folder. If it's essential backups they go in hard cases. If it's one of the zillions of other backups I make I simply title them, date them, and drop them right back on a spare spindle. They take up less space, they are as protected as any other method, and I know before hand that chances are I wont ever need to look at them again, but just in case, I've got them.
"Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"
It makes for efficient storage, but when you actually need to find a CD, it's even worse than thin cases or binders, because you have to shuffle through a huge stack of discs to find the one you're looking for...and that's assuming that you know which spindle it's on in the first place.
So...basically, for ease-of-location, spindles are a bad idea.
I feel your pain, man. I've moved several times in the last 5 years and jewel & DVD cases have been big problems for me. Here's a couple of things I've done:
1. Ive purchased a few of those Nylon CD case thingies at Best Buy. Okay, I'm an idjit for not knowing the proper name for them, but hopefully you get the idea. I intentionally bought ones that are very different in design so I could tell them apart. I have a grey one that I keep the DVDs in and a black one for backups. I also have a blue one for some of my PS2/Dreamcast games etc.
2. I have a big hard drive that I've copied a number of the CDs to. Nearly all of my driver and application installs are there and I can just browse to the folder and get it started. I've also downloaded cracks for a few of my games so I could do that as well. (I love how that makes me a pirate even thoug I own the game.) Every year or so I buy a new hard drive and move the data over. Lately I've been using external drives so that this process would be a little more laptop friendly.
Eventually I'm going to rip my DVDs and do the same little trick I mentioned in step 2. I have a DVD +RW DVD burner that my DVD player happily plays, so on movie night I can just get a burn going and play it. (More specifically, start the burn the night before... but you probably get what I mean.)
With hard drives as big as they are these days, physical media is becoming more and more of a nuisance. Netflix is looking awfully good to me right now.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
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.
It depends on two factors:
1) How many CD's there are
2) How often you expect to use them
If there are many CD's, your choices are either thich jewel cases or the circular stacks with the pole in the middle, that come with a bunch of CD's. If you expect to look through them, you should buy the thick jewel cases (or a binder, actually). If you do not, storing them on the large circular things is great, because it does not take up too much space. Essentially, if you want to have it, *just in case*, go with the smallest, least obtrusive method. If you want to use them, then go with something that is easy to look through.
Having said that, I suggest you stop using CD's. Buy a large USB disk, create a backup directory with a bunch of subdirectories, and use that instead. Or even buy an external hard drive for backups. If it's really that important to you, it's worth the cost. Also, consider backing up over a network to another server, as opposed to physical media (or along with physical media).
I think it helps to think about this problem and identify some basic constraints:
1. You want to organize a great number of physical items. This means you simply need a proportional amount of space, unless you use a more efficient (i.e. physical volume per byte) storage medium
2. You want a system that allows for easy access and identification of these items. This will require even more space, unless you offload access and/or identification to magical computer land.
Just writing those two things out has led me to think of a number of possible solutions outside grappling for some magical panacea to CD storage:
As for constraint #1, consider buying a hard-drive and migrating CD contents to the drive.
As for constraint #2, there are a couple of ways to go. You could buy/build some sort of system that stores and retrieves CDs for you. Then you wouldn't need a bulky jewel case, just a bar code. In a similar but simpler vein, just make a database of all your CDs. There is a surprising amount of information present in the cases, which is why you want full view of them. But get that information in a database and you can use a simple UID to identify CDs. Then you can store CDs in small cases or even a binder.
In fact, if you go to a UID system, you can put all your CDs in one of those big binders. If you keep them ordered by UID then you can access via binary search -- get your big O down to log(n)!
Just incredible. Over a dozen posts, and not a single person has stated the obvious.
Amaray DVD Cases
They come in regular size and super-slim. You can place artwork inside that covers the front, back, AND spine. If you don't want artwork, you can get them in clear form. They fit on a standard bookshelf. They're made of durable, flexible plastic so they won't wear to anywhere near the same degree as CD cases. They can hold manuals, and other materials on the inside. You can get them in forms that hold multiple disks. Etc., etc., etc.
Basically, they're the nearest thing to a perfect case.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
There are really a few solutions, depending on how many disks your trying to keep track of and how often you actually need to get to them.
If you are talking about a relatively small number of disks that you are going to access often, then the best solution is probably just copy the disk images to your hard drive. It's pretty simple to mount an image under Linux, and I believe there are programs available to do it under Windows too (though some games I think break this programs to prevent piracy). I'm not sure about OS X, since I've never actually had to do it.
If you don't feel like (or can't) rip disks to your hard drive, and are still working with only a couple hunderd disks, then you might consider one of those holders that hangs on the wall. Not sure what they are called, think geek was selling them a while back. Basically, it's a big thing you hang on the wall, and put your disks in them so they face out. These work best if you don't have a bunch of disks that look the same (though you could always use a bit of tape and marker to label them).
If you have a lot of disks that you need to get to occasionally, then the best solution is probably just to buy replacement jewel cases. They are pretty cheap in bulk and you can just transfer the liners into the new jewel case when the old one busts. This scales pretty well and you can just stick them on a shelf and quickly find what you need.
Finally, if you have things that you almost never need to get to, or if you need to get to a bunch of cds at the same time (say, an OS disk, plus all driver disks, and software) then CD spindles seem to take the least amount of space. Just group the disks by task or category, then label them.
If you go the replacement jewel case route, you might just consider getting DVD cases. I find that they are a bit more sturdy than regular jewel cases, and still fit well in rows on shelves.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
They are slim cases, but otherwise they are really great: Ejector CD cases. I don't know if they have them in full jewel case width though, probably not, but that's the best I'm aware of.
A disc carousel?
s c_stakka/
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/04/21/imation_di
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.
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
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!!!
Does it go on forever?
I use catalogs and cases. For my 1300 data-filled dvds (legitimate backups, honest!) I use a nifty app called SuperCat which lets me browse all of my discs in an explorer-like interface, and is fully searchable. My discs are all in label order, so on average it takes me 30 seconds to find what I'm looking for in SuperCat, find the disc, and get it in the drive. For proper audio CDs or film DVDs, duh, store them alphabetically, in wallets or slimlines, or use another of many available catalog apps.
I used to DJ for a college radio station and I found my CD's would get scratched using a big binder because of tiny bits of dirt would make holes in the data layer from the weight of all the other full CD pages on top of each other.
Now I swear by the Viewpak XG by Univenture (bottom of the page). They are heavy duty vinyl slips with a soft backing for 1 CD/DVD, a slip for the front cover of the album, and a back slip behind the CD for the back cover of the album.
They have packages without the artwork slips if you don't need them.
These things are real slim, robust, and if you need to order alphabetically or whatever, it's very easy to add or subtract from your collection without having to mess with everything (ie, in a binder).
They also sell Storage Boxes that are just the right size for the packs, or course you can just use shoe boxes or home-made wood crates like me.
Univenture has at least one customer for life. Long live physical media!
Shouldn't You expect more from your DJ?
If you have the old caddy-type CD drive, a big pile of caddies is a good storage option. That way you never touch the discs themselves, so avoid the scratches and fingerprints. But those drives are getting hard to find. Personally I got a lot of caddies on ebay, but have had too much trouble with the drives (and besides, SCSI is its own hassle). I also got a rack-mount box with 8 caddy-type drives in it, and my plan was to put a low-end motherboard inside and use Linux to serve up individual NFS and Samba exports; but then I would have to deal with issues like automounting/unmounting on access, and a software eject mechanism that works across the network. I haven't gotten around to it so far. By the time I do, CD's may be obsolete.
I also got an NSM 100-CD jukebox on ebay. It has SCSI for the drive, and RS-232 to control the robot. I managed to find specs for the control protocol on the net, so wrote a program to control it. At one point I had an automount lashup that would automatically load the right disc when it is accessed, but it didn't work quite right, so I was going to reimplement it using FUSE. I haven't gotten around to that project, either.
Nowadays hard drives are just too cheap. Might as well consolidate all those discs in one place.
I've also downloaded cracks for a few of my games so I could do that as well. (I love how that makes me a pirate even though I own the game.)
Right there with you brother.
I started downloading the game cracks to avoid the hassles of the CD checks. With the CDs off in some never never land & the pirate checker on, I could never just play a game on a whim. I had to go dig the actual CD out of whatever plastic bin (toddler proofing)I put it in.
The problem is once I learned to download the crack, I had also learned where to download the game. Add to that I felt I got burned by being a early purchaser of some sequels that disappointed (I felt ripped off). Now I download the game and the crack. If I like it and play it, I'll buy the Original/Expansion combo that usually comes out 3 months after the Expansion hits.
So, in trying to avoid piracy, the publishers annoyed me to the point that I ened up learning how much easier it was to just pirate the game. Good move guys.
Almost the same with DVDs. They put so much ad crap in the DVD before the movie (Disney) I learned to rip the DVD, remaster it, and make a new DVD. Once you learn how to do that, you might as well get the DVDs from the library and make your own copy. Why buy the latest Pixar when you'll have to remaster your purchased copy anyhow? Just remaster the library's copy. Once again due to annoyance I learned how to be a pirate. You guys are doing great.
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!
John
I'm wagering the reason you're getting no love is that you linked directly to a page to buy the thing. There's a fair bit of anti-commercialism on Slashdot, and some might feel you're sort of astroturfing.
And, sometimes, "Redundant" is the best way to mod down a post if "Troll" and "Flaimbait" and so on don't work. It comes with the added bonus you're a lot less likely to get hit on M2 with it, because who's going to read all of the comments to see if you're really and truly redundant?
You like splinters in your crotch? -Jon Caldara
Inexpensive, biodegradable, and easy. Also helps you rid yourself of the notion that CDs/DVDs are anything more than bits of plastic that somehow merit being displayed on a shelf.
I went through this a couple of years ago. I had just under 2K CDs and spent a few weeks investigating storage alternatives which included everything from the consumer oriented 100-CD display racks for your living room, to large capacity wooden shelving, to painfully expensive specialised office cabinets. Complete waste of time.
Now, everything gets put into a paper window-less sleeve. Each CD gets a number, the relevant info is keyed into a database, and a simple label is applied to the outside of the sleeve. I figure it takes me about 20 seconds for each CD. Compare that to the time and expense of designing/printing/cutting up inserts for jewel cases (slim or otherwise), and you get the idea. If a database isn't your kind of thing, grepping a simple list should work just fine. As a side note, I entertained the idea of printing on the sleeves directly using a LaTeX template, but decided against it and use simple adhesive labels exclusively. Note that I opted for window-less sleeves to avoid having to design and print and insert for each CD.
As for "storing" all the CDs, I just modified a drawer by sectioning it off so that each section would hold exactly 100 CDs. The CDs are stored upright (to protect the CD) and arranged front to back, so finding and retrieving, say, CD number 0983, is quick and easy. Two drawers == 2K CDs. Easily expandable.
As for the old jewel cases, well, they were in mint condition so I gave them to a friend that collects music. Last I heard, he gave them away to a friend of his. I've reclaimed a huge amount of space in my office, and the clutter is gone. I have no "dusting" or similar nonsense to contend with, and made my life is a bit more sane by sticking a few plants on the shelves that were once reserved for CDs. Knowing that my CDs are protected in a cool dry place doesn't hurt, either.
You can buy sleeves directly from any paper manufacturer. There's plenty that offer specialised CD selections that will be happy to sell to you. Alternatively, you can buy a box of 1K from a reseller on eBay for just a few bucks.
As a final note, you may want to investigate something similar ready-made in the form of small metal or plastic boxes that resemble miniature hanging file folders; you can find these in most office-supply stores. The problem I've found with that approach, however, aside from the price, is that each hanging insert is prenumbered (a problem if for large collections) and requires you to squeeze 2 CDs into each. Hardly a safe approach considering how tightly they fit, not to mention that if you remove the entire insert from the box, you'll be carrying around 2 CDs instead of just the one you wanted.
YMMV.
I buy the hard plastic boxes that hold 10 cds each from rima.com, Hard Plastic Box for 10 CDs, 20-Pack. Of course, I put each CD in an individual CD sleeve.
In some cases, I put the device driver CDs together in boxes. In other cases, I'll put the various CDs for a particular CD in a box. And just slap a label on the front.
They take up a whole lot less room than individual cases and are much better at grouping things together.
Library supply houses have a variety of improved
CD cases. Demco (http://www.demco.com) used to
sell polycarbonate ones (i.e., bulletproof glass)
which were fantastic, though expensive,
but don't seem to carry them any more. They do
have a selection of polypropylene ones that are
still better than the usual polystyrene (enter
"cd cases" in their search engine). This
site has links to a few other vendors:
http://www.dansdata.com/discsavers.htm
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.
The main advantage of Univenture disc sleeves is that they don't scratch the disc. This holds true whether you leave the discs in the sleeves for a long time or constantly take the discs in and out of the sleeves. I have been actively using them for YEARS with no visible disc scratching. In addition, their disc wallets have paper labels on the spines, which means (unlike other CD wallets) you can label the spines and thereby easily tell from looking at the spines which wallet a particular disc is in -- and yes, the spines are wide enough to hold disc titles for every disc inside, although you may have to write small.
The Univenture disc wallets have plastic outer shells which are considerably more durable than standard jewel cases. In terms of space consumption, they are comparable to spindles, because of the thinness of the sleeves. The only real drawback is the cost -- on a per-disc basis they literally cost more than blank media. Still, compared to the value of the data that I keep on my discs, the cost of providing good storage for the discs is well worth it.
I use different colored paper sleeves. Those packs of 50 in 5 colors from Memorex are great and disposable
Paper is made of wood fibers and will scratch CD and DVD coatings. If you keep discs in paper sleeves you can end up "fogging" the disc with micro-scratches to the point where it won't be readable anymore, at least not without being repaired by something like this. (Just for reference I have had great results from that particular unit, and it doesn't leave radial lines like the "Skip Dr." units.)
Instead of paper sleeves, use non-scratching Tyvek (the same stuff they put on houses):
Pack of 100
Pack of 1,000
Just to stay totally on topic, the original poster may want to check out the complete Cyberguys catalog. They have a large number of different CD/DVD holder/case options, from quad CD jewel cases to CD/DVD carousels and other alternative storage possibilities. (Note this part of the quad CD jewel case description: "The durable, translucent polypropylene case will not break or shatter like ordinary plastic jewel cases". Interesting.) Something like this may actually be what the original submitter is looking for. No breakage and saves space but still has a readable index to make it easy to find things.
Cyberguys' prices are great on almost everything in their inventory and they have tons of "neato" geeky items that always make me wish I had more money. For basic computer items like network cables, adapters, cases of various types, testers and such, they have become my supplier of choice. For bigger stuff like hard drives, CD/DVD burners, monitors and such I still go to Newegg though. No, I don't work for them or get any kickbacks for the links, unfortunately.
After almost loosing (TWICE) my entire ripped CD collection (EAC Secure TEST/COPY into FLAC), I finally really heard what I had been told over and over but never believed.
RAID IS NOT BACKUP!
If you think having a parity drive makes your data safe, you WILL regret it. Even RAID1 won't save you when your power supply fails violently trashing multiple drives.
My solution? I built up a new RAID server with higher capacity drives, and leave the original server turned off as a mirror that I sync once every month or two. I occasionally compare every file to ensure no data corruption. It takes days to compare terabytes over a LAN, but then I know ahead of time about bad/failing hardware.
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.
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.
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/
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.