To those who are now diskless - how much storage?

DiscoDave

DiscoDave

DiscoDave

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Hi Chaps,

I'm almost ready to start digitising my blu ray collection. I'd say I currently have about 50 blu rays.

To those who have already done this - how much storage do you have?

Hard disks are still quite expensive and I'm wondering if 2x3TB disks (RAID 1) will be sufficient or if I should save up and get a 4 bay NAS.

A 4 bay NAS with 2x3TB drives is £485.96 (intention to add more disks as required)
A 2 bay NAS with 2x3TB drives is £371.36

Thanks,

David
 
The 4 bay for the sake of an extra 100. You're only going to fill one of the disks with your current collection but if its your ripping your own disks you don't want to get to the point where you are deleting one film to fit another on.

Its very easy to fill disc space with bd images
 
I currently run a kind of RAID 5 with Parity, it has 14TB of storage/9.23TB usable.

I have both my work and media on it. I will separate them in the summer and put all the media into its own NAS...as big as possible.
 
I'm thinking of doing this over the summer, my main concern is what is the best way to create a digital copy of the disk without losing any quality? Obviously there's some discussions over legal implications, so want to make sure I do it properly!
 
BR is large because of all the features, different HQ sound channels etc - if you take the only bits you're interested in, i.e. the film and the sound track (be it DTS or whatever) then it does end up being a smaller file and good quality.
 
I've got a Core2Duo machine with (currently) 4.5TB of storage, in the cellar, running Windows Home Server. This keeps it cool, and out of the way so any noise is no worry.

With building a proper PC, rather than using a microserver or NAS, it's more easily expandable to add more storage, without having to worry about only being able to fit in a certain number of disks, and having to scrap the whole thing to expand. OK, it may use slightly more power, and take up slightly more space, but the scalability, and the ability to run any bit of software I want, more than makes up for that.
 
I do like this idea but nearly £500 just to move content you already own from one format to another seems like a hell of a lot of money.
 
TheVoice said:
I do like this idea but nearly £500 just to move content you already own from one format to another seems like a hell of a lot of money.
Click to expand...

It isn't just this though. Having your media converted and stored digitally allows you to use it more flexibly than just having it on the original media disks.

My media setup allows me to painlessly stream to my iPad or Android phone anywhere that I can get a reasonable network connection on them (be that 3g or Wifi). I also have quite a few concerts ripped and indexed into the software I use which means that I can bookmark particular performances I like which would be across multiple disks and multiple concerts ... which means I can sit down and watch what I really like in one sitting without having to dig out and swap disks all of the time.

As for the OP ... go for the 4-bay NAS ... over time you will be glad to have the room for expansion.

Personally have 2 NASes, a 2-bay with 2x1TB mirrored and another 2-bay with 2x2TB mirrored + 2TB external and 1TB external.
 
DiscoDave said:
I thought that as well. I hear noise can be an issue with them though, plus the cashback has gone which is a little frustrating.
Click to expand...

Cash back is still on I believe.

Looking at the HP site.

I think for stuff like this and Media etc either the HP micro-server or a purpose built NAS etc are the way to go, certainly to me, it seems cheaper, you can build something to your spec and size and add to it as and when you want. Stick it out of the way if it is noisy as well.
 
A couple of HP Microservers with FreeNAS or similar is perfect. Or have 1 with WHS if you want a bit of Windows home networking and the other as a pure NAS.

With 4 discs in each (5 if you include the system drive) that's well over 20Tb of data - which should do for most of us :p
 
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