Storage for DVD archive

foreright · 2 Dec 2010 at 09:26

I am to build a HTPC in the near future and in the meantime will start to rip my DVD's.
I am led to believe that using DVDShrink and saving them IGig VOB files is the way to go if you save them to an external HD which should be formatted FAT23 is the way to go. Firstly is that sound information.
If so, does it do any harm if I am currently saving them to a HD formatted NTFS and then transfer them to said FAT32 storage later.
I will ultimately have 3Gig of rips that I shall either connect to my HTPC through USB or network ie. ethernet.
I will also like to back up the archive and would also like to know the best way to go ie. straight forward mirror of main drive and stored in a cupboard or NAS etc.
As you can see I haven't a clue and need some guidance on all matters.
Please steer me in the right direction - Cheers

Edit: OK my mistake, I meant 3 TB (400+ DVD's)
The reason the FAT 32 argument arose initially was because I copied rips to a pen drive formatted FAT32 to play on the USB port of a DVD player.
Would you please address my question with my edited post - Sorry

Five_Star · 2 Dec 2010 at 09:54

The NTFS format supports larger hard disks and also supports larger individual files than FAT32 but causes problems for non Windows devices, but if you are only going to be access files from Windows I'd go with NTFS formatted disks.

As for the setup are you sure you'll only have 3GB of data to store, that doesn't sound very much? I'd be thinking more like 30GB or even 3TB! but I guess it depends on how many DVDs you are backing up and how much you are compressing them.

Best form of backup for the data size involved would be a external hard disk connected to your main machine. A 500GB USB hard disk should be large and fast enough, then you can keep it somewhere safe out of the way.

RAID wont help as its not a backup and is only useful to keep systems and data running online, think about what would happen if the machine burst into flames! Keep your backups seperate

foreright · 2 Dec 2010 at 10:00

OK my mistake, I meant 3 TB (400+ DVD's)
The reason the FAT 32 argument arose initially was because I copied rips to a pen drive formatted FAT32 to play on the USB port of a DVD player.
Would you please address my question with my edited post - Sorry

Five_Star · 2 Dec 2010 at 10:07

3TB seems much more like it, and unfortunately changes things quite a lot

Pen drives are usually FAT32 to aid compatibility and aren't running to massive sizes (yet!)

foreright · 2 Dec 2010 at 10:16

What do you suggest to store, play and back up the 3 TB of DVD archive. USB or network?

Five_Star · 2 Dec 2010 at 12:40

For 3TB you are going to need more than one disk as no doubt that figure is going to rise as you add more DVDs and possibly blu-ray? I know 3TB disks are available but imagine loosing 3TB all in one go if the disk died :eek:

I would recommend you take a look at Microsoft Windows Home Server (WHS) its very capable, even on old hardware. You can add disks of any size to the volume and it can duplicate data to make sure its safe guarding against disk failure (at a 50% disk space penalty)
Now this isn't a true backup solution but you can usually loose a disk and all your data would be OK. If something catastrophic happened and the machine melted you would be screwed and loose all your data.

It really depends how much money you want to spend and how much you value the data and the time you spent creating the DVD images.

If you had unlimited cash you could use Windows home server to store and play all the DVDs from day-to-day then up in the loft or somewhere else have a qnap / synology / Drobo NAS device mirroring the data on the WHS box, but ofcourse this would cost a lot.

Most people will just use either WHS or a NAS box and deal with single disk failures as a when and hope nothing worse happens along the way!