Storage System for Thousands of CDs and DVDs?

Lucy V. asks: "My husband works for a firm in New York that receives customer data on CD and DVD. After copying the data to their server, they are required to retain the original media for several months until the job is delivered and the customer has approved the work. It is common for the firm to have 30,000 CD's and DVD's on hand at any one time. They are struggling to find a better storage solution than what they have now as the current setup is awkward and requires quite a bit of space. They are removing the media from the jewel case and slipping them into one of those large notebook style disk holders and then storing the notebook on a shelf. I have spent quite a bit of time doing web searches for CD and DVD storage but nearly all the racks that I find are low capacity ones intended for home use. I have found one vendor called Can-Am that makes a high quality steel drawer system that might fit the bill." Has anyone found (or put together) a storage system that can handle thousands of discs?

Comments

Imation Disc Stakka

[Fbelch]

Maybe something like this might be what you are looking for....

http://www.imation.com/products/disc_stakka/index. html

- Stack units up to five high to create a tower that holds up to 500 discs without any extra cabling or rebooting your computer.
- Connect towers using powered USB hubs to control over 100 towers (that's over 50,000 discs) from a single computer.

Re:Imation Disc Stakka

[Sparr0]

http://dansdata.com/quickshot005.htm

Holds 50% more discs for 25% less price.

I had the DC-101, it was awesome. The 300 is supposed to be superior in every way.

Storage solutions

[iotashan]

Did any of you even read the article? They need to store the physical media, after it has already been archived to another data storage system.

I'd check out any of the big-boys that deal with large-scale, physical storage.

The one company I can think of off the top of my head is Spacesaver. If you've ever seen a hospital's records storage system, it was probably a Spacesaver unit.

They even claim CD/DVD support:
http://www.spacesaver.com/appl_cat.asp?cat_id=4

Professional Archive cabinets

[oneiros27]

Lots of companies make cabinets for large scale archiving for data centers and the like. They don't tend to be cheap, but they can pack them rather densely:

      http://www.russbassett.com/products/cabinets_disc. cfm
      http://www.can-am.ca/cdvideo1.htm

There are also moving shelf options, but they normally are for mixed media (tapes, cds, etc), and you have to buy the shelves, then fill it with media packs to hold the type of media you're storing:

      http://www.systems-supply.com/nms2k/edpstorage.htm
      http://www.russbassett.com/media/products_disc.cfm

If you're going for cheap and densely packed, I'd probably re-sleeve them and drop them into a drawered cabinet, but you'll need to make sure they're well organized if you expect to ever find them again.

Re:Interns and Cake Containers

[twistedsymphony]

Use the above mentioned CD labeling system.
Place CD's in 208/300 CD/DVD binder.
Get shelving that will fit the Binders (Ikea IVAR works great for adjustments)

FTFA:

They are struggling to find a better storage solution than what they have now as the current setup is awkward and requires quite a bit of space. They are removing the media from the jewel case and slipping them into one of those large notebook style disk holders and then storing the notebook on a shelf.

Sounds like that's about what they currently do and it's not working out for them.