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

Here's the real solution to your requirements...

[Optic7]

There was a story here on slashdot a few months ago about an alternative to jewel cases, where people discussed all kinds of options for CD/DVD storage. I found this particular comment to be the most useful for really large scale CD/DVD storage. It seems simple, effective, and practical. Also check the other comments on that story for other ideas, but I think this is really the best solution for you based on what you said:

Large quantity CD/DVD storage solution

White folder boxes

[jnaujok]

Maybe this is a bit too low-tech for slashdot, but when cleaning up stacks of empty cd cases, I found that the small white "document storage boxes" that you can get at any office supply store perfectly fit six stacks of CDs in their cases. Just stack the disks into the box, mark them with a "keep until" date and when that rolls around, just toss the whole thing (the boxes only cost about $0.50 each.) Keeps it clean, reduces the time to pull them out of the case, and if you need to recover one, just pull the box that falls into the date range and search that box. Each box holds about 500 discs, so you'd be talking about 60 boxes, which means a decent size file room will store them all.

It's cheap and easy. But probably way too low tech for the slashdot crowd.

Any additional time spent is time wasted...

[stienman]

How do you scan them in now? Do you put them in an automatic machine, do you have humans sitting there doing the work, etc?

However they come out of the scanning process should direct how to store them.

If you've got humans doing the work then put them back in the jewel case, and drop the case into a filing box that you can store on shelving. Mark that box with a large barcoded sticker. Every week scan all the boxes, and have the system beep when you scan a box due for disposal. Dump the contents into the secure shed bin, and put the box on the pile of empties for new projects.

If you do the scanning automatically,a nd simply have a human de-casing the disc and putting them on a spindle or stack, then buy spindle carriers that can pick up the spindle or stack on the output side and drop the entire thing into a suitably sized box, then do the same as above. (I'd probably go this route anyway rather than the storage in jewel case and big box above).

Look for "cake boxes" that are really spindle CD/DVD boxes, such as the following: cake boxes

Are the CDs/DVDs in small batches or big batches? ie, do you have to store 5 of them together, or 500 together? Is there a great variance (do you accept both customers that give 5 and customers that give 500?).

If you want to spend tens of thousands of dollers then a good engineering firm can design a system that you just feed discs into. It'll then scan them for you, store them, and on regular intervals shred those that have been authorized for shredding. Should take up the space of a large closet or small cubicle for a storage capacity of 5,000 or so discs, and scanning capacity of a few hundred per hour.

-Adam

Re:Bookshelf or spools?

[The Great Pretender]

Coming from an environment that is required to retain client data for up to 7 years, it strikes me that a simple book-shelf is terrible. Surely the CD/DVD's should be in a fire/earthquake/flood proof container? I would have to ask what the liability of the original posters referenced firm is should they have disasterous loss. The original poster makes reference to a steel draw, suggesting that fire proofing is required. Assuming that the original CD's need to be retained the best method that I could think of would be to archive the images of the CD/DVD's on a harddrive for ease of use and then find a third party managed storage space off-site for bulk storage of the disks. Once a week, or month, do a store/purge cycle. The liability for the hard copies then falls under managment of the third parties facility and their iinsurance.