Media Storage Help

[FireStormGS]

I've decided that I'd like to move my media (movie) collection to hard drive from cds/dvds. For the longest time I've just burnt movies to cd and put them into a cd case. When I got a dvd burner I started putting several movies to a dvd. Anyways, some of the older cds are starting to go currupt, and I've lost a couple dvds recently, they just become unreadable after a month or two. I generally buy and burn to decent media as well, usually ridata.

Hard drive prices seem to be pretty cheap these days, well at least compared to when I last bought one, which was a 160gig for $100 last year. Can get double the storage for that price these days.

So I'm thinking about buying a 300 or 320 gig drive to move my collection to and hopefully save what I have left before they go currupt as well. My question is what the best way to store the hard drive is. I want to keep the hours down on the drive to keep the chances of the drive dieing down. So I can either buy an external enclosure, or setup a fileserver with some extra parts I have laying around and only turn it on when I want to watch a movie. I think eventually I will get a matching drive to mirror everything to just incase the first drive does die for some reason. And in that case I would raid 1 the drives in a file server setup.

Would it be better to buy one reliable drive now? I'm looking at either a seagate or another western digital. Or would it be better to get two 300gig maxtors or something off ebay for cheap and raid 1 right away. Then if one of the cheap drives die at least I still have everything.

I'm really just looking for suggestions on the best way to store media files. I'd like to here what everyone else is doing as well. Are a lot of you just sticking to dvds? Or is storing movies what everyone is doing in the terabyte club? And for that matter what is everyone doing to fill up tyrabytes of space??

Thanks in advance.

 

[Johnboy12358]

for what you need putting a hdd in an external enclsure might work. You could also try and build a separate server out of parts, and use a single 320 gb drive to start, and then add a second 320gb drive later and build a software raid1 array. I personally wouldnt buy a used hard drive off of ebay, just because its probably a better idea and more worth your money to get a new one. I've seen the 320gb seagate perp recording hdd on newegg for right at $100, so that would do you well I think.

Personally, I would probably go the server route, just beause in the future if you need more space, you can just add more drives. That and reading from a raid1 array is faster than reading from a single drive (for streaming movies and other media off of the server)

If you wanted to get really fancy shmancy, you could even try and put together a raid5 array if you wanted to add a third drive, so you would have more space and reduncancy as well.

BTW link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148140

 

[DougLite]

One drive is not reliable. Two drives, even in RAID-1, will not protect your data. Even if you proceed with this project, continue to backup to removable media.

With that said, storing the movies on a hard drive still has tremendous advantages. You'll be able to access them much faster, not have to swap discs, and won't have to expose your backups to potnetial damage when you go to put a disc in or take it out.

Also, don't buy HDDs on Newegg. You'll be sorry. I know it's $10 more, but you'll get that $10 back when you don't have to RMA: http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101457

 

[Johnboy12358]

Your data isnt ever 100% safeguarded, but running raid 1 or raid 5 does add a safety net. Of course back ups are needed, but if you think about it those can go bad too, so you're never really 100% safe.

And i'll take that newegg thing into consideration, ive heard that theres problems buying hdds from newegg before, thanks.

 

[FireStormGS]

Thanks for the advice so far. I'm in canada so I can't buy from newegg anyways. I'd end up getting the drive from canadacomputers or ncix. Or I'll just wait until something goes on sale. I've got the rest of the summer to figure this out as I left all my cd cases in my house at school a few hours away. I am liking the server idea though so I can just add more drives at a later date and possible go the raid route as well.

 

[Johnboy12358]

Keep in mind if you use SOFTWARE raid, I dont think that you can add drive to an array, you can always set up another array though. If you go the more expensive route and get a dedicated raid card, then there are some that can add space on the fly. I may be wrong, because I havent dove into software raid yet myself, but this is my understanding. Which is why when I build my server, I'm planning on going balls to the wall and getting all 4-5 320GB drives at the same time, so that I can get 1TB+ so I wont need to add space for a while

 

[FireStormGS]

I have a promise raid card kicking around somewhere. Something else to test if it still works. I bought it back when I was going to raid 1 two 160gigs to save all my important stuff too. I ended up not likeing the idea of having both drives in the same computer and risk them dieing at the same time, either by something in the computer dieing or the riad card going or whatever. So I ended up leaving one in my computer and the other in an external enclosure. So now I only connect the external drive every few weeks and sync the drives. I think it's a safer way than raid 1.

This media setup is different though. I'd be upset if I managed to lose all my movies, but I'd move on and would probably have most of them still sitting on cds.

Edit, this is the raid card I have sitting around, a Promise Ultra133 TX2 2-channel Ultra ATA/133 Controller.

Would I be able to easily build a raid 1 array later on by adding another hard drive? Or would I lose the information on the first drive.

 

[Johnboy12358]

I *believe* that you can add a second drive later on and build a raid 1 array off of the first drive, since it is just a mirror. You would not be able to build a raid 0 array (not that you would want to) because thats striping. I dont think that you would be able to use that card on its own to make a raid 5 array either, because it only has two channels, and 5 requires at least 3 hard drives.

I may be wrong on certain things, if I am, please correct me.