How do you store your anime / manga

[CaiSter21]

i use both the external hard drive method and the dvd-r method

[w00tix]

As far as recommendations, I would stick with your DVDs and just try to cram as much as you can on a disc and make a spreadsheet catalog or something. Keep them in nice sleeves. If you protect your DVDs and be careful handling them, there shouldn't be any problems with scratches and such.

An external hard drive may seem like a good solution in your case (If you get one on sale), but judging by now many DVDs you have, it'll get filled up REAL quick.

[suguru]

I just put my DVD-Rs in vinyl 2-DVD sleeves from Office Depot, store them in old cases that I used to have rows of 3.5" floppies in back in the day, and index them in Excel. My spreadsheet has a column for disc #, series name, and episodes on the disc, and using auto-filter it's really easy to find anything I'm looking for. I like Kepmis Curious's text file idea though, since that'd be pretty easy to search through too, but since I started the spreadsheet back when I only had a couple dozen DVD-Rs it's been easy enough to keep up with.

I'm too cheap to buy a bunch of extra hard drives, I'd rather spend the money buying R1 DVDs--so I just back things up to DVD-R when my hard drive is close to full, and if the DVD-R goes bad in the future, I figure I can always download it again. Or by that point if it's licensed and I liked it enough to rewatch it I'll probably own the commercial DVD anyway. For a series I really like I'll keep it on my hard drive AND back it up to DVD-R just in case.

Storing commerical DVDs is a bigger space problem for me than DVD-Rs, but between Thinpak cases and a plastic chest in the closet, there's still enough room on my bookshelf where I don't have to run to Ikea for quite a while yet (hopefully).

[Shenlong]

I have 4 external 120 gig harddrives that I store all my stuff on, its more expensive then burning cds or dvds but too many times in the past I've found discs that get lost, stepped on, broken, stopped working or certain files that weren't burned correctly and thus are unreadable. Just buy them on sale, and factor in the time you save from having to burn, archive and maintain your dvds and it is a good investment imo.

I use the first to store ongoing series, and once they're finished I move them to one of the archive drives. They take up very little space and it is a breeze to find whatever I want withing seconds. Plus I get to give them cool names; Oden, Curry, Dim Sum and Ramen

Oden - Unfinished/ongoing series
Curry - Archive for short 13/26 ep series
Dim Sum - Archive for long series
Ramen - Full with older anime and anime music videos

[Mr.Hawq]

I store them on my hardrive, I have a 80gb hardrive, If I liked the series alot, I would burn it into dvd. If I think that the show is worth rewatching once, I would keep it, rewatch it on my comp, then delete it.

[Rainy]

It seems as if many people are in the habit of obsessively burning every single anime series they downloaded. I don't see the point of it. Of all the shows I watch, only the ones with a fairly high rewatch value are worthy to be burned into DVDs. (50% of my select download lists) And the sad thing I re-watched a grand total of about 5 episodes ever since I started to burn them onto CDs 2 years ago.
It is totally expected since I can hardly keep up with watching all the new shows anime industry is tirelessly cranking out.

And for people who still use CD burners, it's highly recommended that you should purchase a DVD burner. I bought mine during Black Friday after-holiday sell. It's cheaper that way. Not only this, I think DVD burners are worth EVERY cent you spent because merely finding a place to store mountains of CDs can be such a hassle.

Another thing, does anyone know a DVD player capable of playing data DVDs I burned? I am a little tired of watching them all on my computer monitor. (Screen size isn't the problem, it's just my computer speakers need to be replaced)

[NoSanninWa]

Originally Posted by Rainy

It seems as if many people are in the habit of obsessively burning every single anime series they downloaded. I don't see the point of it. Of all the shows I watch, only the ones with a fairly high rewatch value are worthy to be burned into DVDs. (50% of my select download lists) And the sad thing I re-watched a grand total of about 5 episodes ever since I started to burn them onto CDs 2 years ago.

Before I burn anything, I ask myself if I might want to show it to someone else someday. I only rewatch a few shows by myself. I keep the collection of burned CDs and DVDs in case I might want to show it to a friend some day in the future. (That includes my tiny anime club.) A good 20% of my collection has subsequently been used to entertain other people, so I consider the DVDs to be money, space and time well spent.

[npal]

Well, I burn everything I download, as long as it's not total crap, but I'm careful about what I download so in most cases, I don't find them bad enough to delete. It's bandwidth spent, and bandwidth price here is steep, and deleting something I spent hours downloading is bad investment.

Anyway, I have only 100 GB at most (the second disk is 120 but at least 20 GBs are usually occupied by something else) to spend on downloaded anime. I burn them on DVDs (Single. DL are too expensive right now), I label the DVD, I create front and back cover for the slim DVD case, make a list on the back of the contents. I don't know if there is other software that do that, but I'm using Roxio 8 to burn them, and since I usually make multiple disk projects, it creates a html list on all project disks with everything I've backep up, on which disk they reside, so even if it doesn't split them right sometimes, it doesn't really matter. Minimum fuss (excluding the cover but I like doing that), and it's database-ready

If the series is so great that I need to watch it on my TV, I create extra DVD-video disks for that particular series, although that rarely happens (I've only done it with Chobits and some other stuff.)

[Rainy]

Before I burn anything, I ask myself if I might want to show it to someone else someday. I only rewatch a few shows by myself. I keep the collection of burned CDs and DVDs in case I might want to show it to a friend some day in the future.

That is awfully altruistic of you. Your motivation puts me to shame. My cousin is the only one who asks for my little-known anime collection. And my primary concern is not "might others enjoy it", it's "will I rewatch it?". -_-''

[NoSanninWa]

Originally Posted by Rainy

That is awfully altruistic of you. Your motivation puts me to shame. My cousin is the only one who asks for my little-known anime collection. And my primary concern is not "might others enjoy it", it's "will I rewatch it?". -_-''

It isn't a matter of who asks for you collection. It is a matter of whom you offer it to. Figure out who will like a particular show. Then when you have time to sit down with them, you need to show it to them. In case you are going to be watching it with them in a place where you can't hook the TV to a computer, you might want to check out our thread to Convert AVI/MKV/MP4 to DVD. That way you can show them anime wherever you have a DVD player. That way you can carry around the DVD with the show you've picked for them, waiting for a moment of boredom. Then, when they are looking for something to do, you whip out the DVD and mention that you've got a show that you think they'll like. Since they're bored, they'll probably watch it. Then you've got your fish hooked.

[Kamui4356]

Originally Posted by Rainy

It seems as if many people are in the habit of obsessively burning every single anime series they downloaded. I don't see the point of it.

I don't see the point in it either. It doesn't stop me from doing it though. The only series I don't save is bleach. However, I slacked off lately, as I had 2 hard drives, one 120 gig, the other 160 with lots of free space. Unfortunately, the 120 gig hd died, and I lost quite a bit of anime including Mahoraba, Air, and LoGH ep 1-62... So it's back to burning dvds for me.

[Mephisto2k]

oh as i see this is a more common problem than i thought.
This a big problem of mine too. I have a 150gb and a 80gb hdd, and a 120 extern hdd. My download programms (emule, bt, irc) download onto the 80hdd. From there I put the file onto the 150hdd once they are ready. When I finished watching a serie i put in onto the 120ehdd unless the serie isnt worth storing and still i brought myself to watch it for some reason. Once im short on space i burn dvds. My problem is that my 80hdd is almost full all the time and my 150hdd with all the "currently watching" animes and mangas is also a problem because i somehow download more that I watch. Im afraid what to do when the new spring anime season comes and a whole bunch of new and good series come out. Maybe ill have to get another extern hdd or something.
I wish i would have bought a 1000gb hdd as my main hdd right from the beginning...

[Rainy]

Even though I have DVD burner and stack of blank DVDs at ready, I still prefer to store my downloaded anime on a hard drive, since it's very convenient to search. My latest addition is a 250 GB disk bought at 60 dollars (after those evil rebates of course). The biggest regret I have is that I should have gotten to Computer USA earlier to grab that 200 GB disk at 30 dollars. T-T

[zoltan_hellhound]

Ive posted a nother tread about the longlivety of videofiles,and when learning about the error rate in burnning to dvds i got curios about how people store their anime..so how do you store youre anime?


Btw sorry fore the spelling

[suwayya]

I have 700gig, 500gig of those are anime. Need to buy more disks, only have 30gig left xD
Or maybe i should just invest in a DVD recorder

[Deathkillz]

Originally Posted by Rainy

Even though I have DVD burner and stack of blank DVDs at ready, I still prefer to store my downloaded anime on a hard drive, since it's very convenient to search. My latest addition is a 250 GB disk bought at 60 dollars (after those evil rebates of course). The biggest regret I have is that I should have gotten to Computer USA earlier to grab that 200 GB disk at 30 dollars. T-T

same as what i think...i prefer having a HD compared to using DVDs as it 1)saves space 2)easier to search through 1 massive folder than 30 odd dvds and 3)no other disadvantages besides the chance of it blowing up in my face

combines with my external hard drive i have about 600gigs of anime ~ only 20gigs of free space >.< but knowing that burning DVDs is more cost effective im still tempted to buy another HD

[vietpimp]

I got 2.x TB of external at home alone not including internals. When I'm downloading stuff I just put them into my internals hd and then transfer them over to the external when I'm bored or watching TV. Right now I have around 1.x TB of anime on the external. The other 2 harddrives are there just in case I need more space so right now I'm just using 3 externals (500GB each). Just hope they dont' crash on me . I might just make a raid server by taking out the hd someday but for now I'll leave it as it is.

[Maxon]

I mainly store on CD-R but also on my internal HD (200GB). I tend to keep any dual-audio stuff and anything that's currenty airing on my internal HD. Everything else gets put on CD-R. The problem with that is I need lots and lots of CD-Rs. They take up entire CD walllets since each 700MB CD-R can take 3/4 episodes.

As well as more RAM and a better graphics card, I'll need to get myself an external HD and a DVD-RW drive.

Originally Posted by Deathkillz

same as what i think...i prefer having a HD compared to using DVDs as it 1)saves space 2)easier to search through 1 massive folder than 30 odd dvds and 3)no other disadvantages besides the chance of it blowing up in my face

This is true. I do prefer my HD, but it's always good to have two copies of everything IMO. Even if I have stuff on an external HD, chances are I'll put them on DVD-Rs too.

[Lost]

I keep series I've finished or dropped on my secondary hard disk and also burn a copy to DVD. Episodes to be QC'ed also go on my secondary hard disk. Currently-airing series live on my primary hard disk; I used to burn them to CD-R regularly, but with DVDs I have to wait until its completed.

[Tasdern]

Good old 6250 mag tape. The Kannon EP 12 is only 2,450.5 feet of tape. That's about 2 reels.

Who needs SD memory when you have tape!

Lets see, if I encoded it onto Mylar Paper tape, it would be... very freaking long!

~Tasdern