Modern anime storage/archiving
 

One of the reasons I tend to choose very carefully when I have 720p and 1080 BD-rip from the same fansubber to choose is because I still burn anime in DVDs.

Bluray discs and Bluray drives are still very expensive compared to DVDs and DVD drives in my country (I don't know about the USA, though...). If they weren't, I'd have no problem burning the huge 1080p rips in 25 GB Blurays (I never trusted double-layer features in discs, not even on DVDs).

But lately in forums I notice everyone complaining about disk space storage do so only mentioning their HDD (or even SSD), not DVD or Blurays. (Personally, I'm scared of leaving important stuff in HDD because, unlike discs, you can't recover data from a HDD without spending a lot of money on a recovery by professionals and you can't get 100% guaranty of a full recovery...)

I've always had the "collector spirit", so I still burn 0,25 € DVDs from good reliable brands with files (anime, films, series, photos and other files). But how is everyone else dealing with this? Do people still archive their anime in discs or just leave them in their HDDs until the said HDD fails...?

DVDs for me. I have a backlog of stuff on my external drive that need to be burned, but I go with DVDs. Best way to back anything up, period.

I'm not the only one, then. :)

But with DVD I now have this big issue: how to burn those 1080p anime movies that are bigger than 4,37 GB? Some go as far as 15 GB! Even the 720p versions go as far as 8 GB. I don't trust the "create 2 or more split .rar files" and burn each into their own disc, because if one disc fails, the rest will most certainly become unreadable, even with recovery files (like ICE ECC ones); not to mention the hassle that is extracting the contents of a huge .rar file, even in "store" mode.

How do you (or anyone burning DVDs) tackle this issue? :confused:

Terabyte HDD's in RAID. Nuff said.

Use a dual layer disc DVD, a BD or just leave it on a HDD. I don't have anything that goes above 7.x GBs though.

RAID can become corrupt and the HDDs can still fail. But it certainly is a lot easier. :heh:

I still prefer archiving my best stuff to DVDs (didn't like the idea of splitting my files, unless they're stored in a flash drive), as right now hard drives are still pricey post-flood, and over time they could also get a really bad hit at any moment.

Yeah, and I'll afford RAID if I have a bundle to spare to cobble up the hardware for such a setup.

I got one of these for storage:
Synology DS411j

I had burned stuff to CDs and DVDs later, but the life time of those is horrible.
A lot of burned media from only 10 years ago is unreadable now, while hdds from that time still work fine.
Also too much work.

That works. For extra security, 2 sets of RAID 1 drives. You'd have 4 copies (5 if you still have it on your computer).

Personally though I just buy 2 external HDDs and manually backup the same data to each drive every month. Not the best way but it isn't so bad if you don't keep most things or download a lot.

Also, discs can "rot". Or just, ya know, get scratched. I feel safer with my HDDs though I don't save most anime, most things I'm backing up are many small files.

Am reading some articles on the matter:
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/opticalmedialongevity.html
http://www.cd-info.com/archiving/longevity/index.html
http://www.cd-info.com/archiving/degradation/index.html
http://www.backupcritic.com/backup-m...urability.html
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub121/contents.html

Disc quality depends on the materials used. Of course, cheap blank DVDs will deteriorate, but there's a handful of really solid blanks that live up to their marketing promises; Taiyo Yuden are one of those best known for longevity claims.

However, there are other factors to consider: how the discs are treated, handled and stored; expose them too long in the open and their lifespan could be shortened. Then there's how the discs were manufactured, as some poorly-made discs can lose themselves after 3 months even without a scratch.

Until somebody comes up with a way that can make recordable media endure more longer than current spec, for now some of us will have to live with the business of archiving to DVDs.

The delete button is your friend. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to archive anime rips; they're trivial to find online, even after years and years. Even the most reliable local storage is less reliable than getting hundreds of other suckers to archive the stuff for you.

I also hope you know that even if you buy "reliable brand" DVD-R's, they're very unlikely to last longer than maybe 10 years, if you're lucky. 2-5 years is probably a more realistic estimate (according to the US National Archives) if you don't place them in climate-controlled storage (they're quite sensitive to humidity and temperature changes). Before the HDD price hike it was also considerably cheaper to store your stuff on big (2TB) HDD's than it was to do so on DVD's, and it might not be much more expensive now.

tl;dr: the year is 2012, not 2002. Please do not burn DVD-Rs, it is retarded to do so.

edit: also, these days (or, well, when HDD prices drop back to normal) it's so retardedly cheap to buy 2TB disks that not having a RAID array is just stupid. Most motherboards have RAID controllers built-in, too.

2TB hdds and be done with it.

Ten years is plenty long. In ten years I hope to be spending my time doing much more productive stuff.

And I won't rely on the internet because all you need is a major crack down and it's all gone.

If you expect that you're not going to care about the stuff in ten years, why are you spending considerable money and effort on archiving it in the first place?

I also note that the repeated crackdowns on basically everything have failed spectacularly in removing any actual piracy, so I really don't see your point there.

What considerable money? The DVDs are cheap.

I never said piracy would end, just that downloading them with ease may change.

When the zombies come, I will be sitting on the beach on Key West, with solar panels, watching my animu off my terabyte HDD's and all of you people relying on the internet will be bored.

Anyways, I can pretty much guarantee that if there's internet, we can get stuff for free. It's just more convenient to have a local copy though. Also gives you a way to visualize how much anime you've watched.

On hard drive longevity, I'm reading this:
http://forums.cnet.com/7723-7588_102...l-hard-drives/

And comparisons between hard drives and DVDRs:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=145312

Also:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...for_burned_CDs

I always have to keep in mind that many electronics, including hard drives, do have MTBF but that varies much on how the drives are being used. Furthermore, as most viewers are watching streamed vids, not everyone has the money or the technical savvy to build a full-on RAID setup.

As such, on a regular basis I have to run HD Tune Pro to check on my two drives for integrity and read off the SMART logs, and right now I don't have the budget to purchase current-gen hard drives and controllers, which leaves me buying good blank discs and burning backups of my favorite shows (I prefer 480p because they're portable and less resource-hungry, and I tend to cherry-pick titles; storytelling is more of my concern than screen resolution) -- and documents.

Because anything could happen to those drives, and should they fail and get myself a new drive, I can then open up my archive and copy the files back in.

It's an insurance policy, really, as I follow a simple rule: two is one, one is none... or shit can happen.

I do keep a very large disc archive that's been around for more than 10 years, stored in protective cases and away from heat, moisture and light, and only very few discs -- both CDRs and DVDRs I got from some of my friends who don't know jack about disc quality -- fail because of wear and tear, or decomposition due to poor construction.

In a country where counterfeits are prevalent, to ensure that I get the right discs for archiving I use DVD Identifier to determine if the blankers are genuine or potential bar coasters (currently I favor Sony and Verbatim DVDRs with materials manufactured by Mitsubishi Chemical).

Until new hard drive prices drop back to pre-flood conditions, making it possible again to buy real solid 1TB biggies (and by then in five year's time SSDs even become more affordable) and set up a personal RAID array, DVD archiving -- and prevalent video streaming -- is all I have right now.

but very small compared to current bdrip filesizes

I strongly prefer avoiding to think about how much anime I've watched, lest I sink into a soul-crushing depression about my wasted life

When prices return to normal, HDD's are pretty cheap and get cheaper at a rapid pace. Even if you can't set up even a RAID1, just making backups to two drives is better than a single HDD, or optical discs.

Having fun isn't wasting your life. That's really the point of life.

DVD are just too small. You need hundred to go near a small HDD capacity.
Now, let's say you have 100 DVD burned (it's not a lot), how do you know if one all your file are there. After 5 years, lot's might not even work anymore. Find which one.

Price of HDD keep getting lower till we go back to old price, 80$ for 2tb, not a bad deal, how much do you pay your dvd? Also keep in mind the time it take to burn around 400 single layers DVD. The number of DVD that might fail in a year, the corrupted files.

Global HDD capacity expected to be restored to 80% in 1Q12
It will still take some time to get back to the incredibly low prices from before.