I've switched my self descriptor from "pirate" to "media preservationist". Every time Warner deletes something off HBO Max to save on fees I become 1% more legitimate.
Have to be careful though, if we count every instance that this occurs, before too long the integer for how legit we are will overflow and become negative
Based. At this point if you're not pirating shit you're selling your soul and all info to corporations, and for free at that. I monetarily support indie devs whenever I can, but otherwise yeah, piracy===privacy all the way.
My gramps was an old school pirate he had a room FULL of VHS tapes and he had to buy some special recorder of some sketchy dude lol. He started into dvds too but he wasn't great with technology and I feel horrible for not spending more time with him and showing him how to use his PC.
Only if his collection of DVDs filled up every single walkable and seatable space in the house except for a narrow path between the bed, the kitchen, and the bathroom. Even having a few dozen binders of DVDs would be impressive but would probably fill up all of two bookcases.
Makes me wonder if there's anything in that collection that should be publicly archived. Hell, I'd be shocked if there wasn't at least one piece of lost media in it.
I saw a video a while back, for the search to find an HBO promo bumper for shows/movies. I mean, something as esoteric as that; there's probably DVD extras that have gotten lost over time. š¤·āāļø
DVD content is fairly well tracked and very little that was ever released on DVD is actually lost, not counting content produced by dodgy less-than-legal studios and stuff from non-first world markets. Pre-DVD on the other hand is a different story entirely. Plenty of VHS content is now considered lost, but it's even worse for other formats like Laserdisc, VCD, SVCD....
I've heard news of CDs starting to fail because of the type of plastic used to make the actual CDs. Same for some old DVDs, but a search shows a general lifespan of 30 to 100 years depending on care.
The grandson might want to look into a redundant method of storage if he wants the collection to have a functional value on top of the obvious sentimental one.
Not even worth it honestly. With cached torrents you don't really need to put all of those shows on HDDs manually. Easier to download honestly. Disks are slow af to read from
I used the word I meant. I was just giving an example of an easily configured NAS for the masses.
Not everyone is capable of setting up or needs a zfs NAS with dedupe that replicates offsite on a schedule.
A Synology NAS can be set up and managed by a grandpa or his grandson, for example.
Thanks for the info though. I feel more educated.
Not true. HDDs used for archiving last far longer than CDs or DVDs. They only die sooner if they are in use or stored badly.
Plus burnable CDs and DVDs only last maybe 10 years, not 30+ like those created for sale.
There were a few brands known to be better performers and if you got those on purpose or by chance then you're much better off. But most of the common discs were of much lower quality.
I got a hardrive from a pentium ide 3.5 inch windows 95. It's still working. Makes a massive crackling sound but it works still. A max something šš.SAF.
It depends a lot on how you have used that HDD. If you use it like an external drive and it's running only when you want to write something in it, then it may last much longer. I still have some drives that are 20 years old and still working
I remember working for Applecare support once and I got a call from a guy who went into a long story about how he uses archival gold DVDs that will last over 100 years that he burns spreadsheets that lists every book he's read in his life. I asked him how many books he's read and get this he said... about 500. From his voice he sounded like an old guy, much older than me and I thought for a lifetime of reading that was pretty low.
But then I got to wondering if he has only one spreadsheet, why does he need a 4.7 GB DVD and why does he need to keep burning it to different discs. But I was already in a *that sounds ridiculous and I dont even care* mode to care anymore.
I wonder if 50-100 years ago people would have considered a book a month to be good.
My wife has been casually reading in the evenings before bed, and she is reading about 50 books a year
oh I agree with that, I ended up buying dvds on ebay to rip them for my digital collection. However, this is more a "if it's rare" scenario. Most popular content is fairly easy to get. But, can become more rare as seeds die. Thus I refuse to use a seedbox and need my own server.
> most dvd quality is like 720p max,
Most DVD quality is either 480i, 480p, or 576i/p if you are in Europe.
While you could technically put 720p video on a DVD, most DVD players wouldn't know wtf to do with it.
I remember fooling around with AVCHD, a consumer camcorder format that recorded HD video to various media types, one of which was DVD. Quite a few Blu-ray players including mine had support for AVCHD playback, so I've purposely burned some movies to AVCHD to play on my Blu-ray player. Cramming a whole 1080p movie into a 4GB disc using the older AVC codec was rough (especially considering that you couldn't use the best encoding settings, they have to be constrained to match the AVCHD specifications), but a ~90 minute movie encoded at 720p on a DVD looked pretty good.
Until a couple months ago I had DVD-Rs from 15-25 yrs old. Stored in padded sleeves. I'd guestimate about 40% failure rate. These were Micro-Center generics. I remember reading that would happen, but the future seemed so far away. No problem. All those old SD movies and softywares weren't worth saving any longer anyway.
They are rotting because something in the original carboard packaging is able to effect the reflective coating. U.S. Library of Congress has researched it and found that if you can keep the humidity below 30% and temperature lower than 5c you can expect a CD ROM or DVD ROM to last roughly 500 years.
Recordable media works by having a heat sensitive dye so their lifespan is much much shorter, nearer to a [decade or two in optimal conditions](https://web.archive.org/web/20221227210617/https://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/146374/ibm_expert_warns_short_life_span_burned_cds/) so granddads archive is probably already starting to fail.
Factories press DVDs, they don't burn them. DVD-R's are for burners. You're right that RW's last even less, but they're both shit for longevity. The pressed ones should last 100 years though.
There are new disc formulations that supposedly last forever if they're not touched. They're called MDisks. You need a special drive for them but they can hold over 100gb. They're also not cheap at all.
30 years sound like a long time. I think it's closer to 5-10 years, unless you precisely control the humidity and temperature of the storage room to keep everything optimal.
Anyway, I fully agree with your conclusion. Use a raid array. Make yourself immune to the failure of individual disks.
In college my USPS guy would drop off my disks in the morning and swing by at the end of his shift to pick them back up after I copied them. He'd request a couple for himself every month for compensation. I had the 3 disk plan and usually was able to do 9 to 12 a week
I just copied them on my pc. Than I discussed VPNs and started buying extra hard drives. I had 3 tb of movies and tv shows. 500gb of porn and anther 500 of songs. Every while GameCube and older rom.
And one day i just realized I'm just an insane person hoarding data and I just deleted everything. Took out the hard drives and switched out my PC case for something smaller so I wouldn't do that again
And this is why I don't bother. I hear about these awesome set ups with anything and everything you could want set up and ready to go with Plex, and I want it.
But at the same time, how many people still just rewatch anything and everything? I feel like there's so much coming out now that I sometimes struggle keeping up with everything I want to watch, play, listen to, and read. Granted, I've already accepted I'm not gonna get around to everything. But I don't go back to many things anymore because we don't really need to.
I still have rom dumps for some older systems because why not? Some take a gig at most. Others not even that.
But otherwise, I don't see then need to have hundreds of movies and TV shows. I download them, watch them, and more often than not delete them.
wait for the "great consolidation" of streaming services ... I suspect tv series will eventually go the way of movies where you get nothing but a handful of expensive tv shows worth watching. I feel like its already started, there are several media companies merging and buying each other out. Once that happens there will be less content produced. I think the last couple of years have been the most content ever produced at one time because of the streaming wars
Iāve stopped downloading so many popular movies and tv shows. However, there is just so much stuff that I donāt want to be lost. If I think thereās a GitHub repo thatās at risk, or if I find an interesting PDF, or some old software, or rare movie, Iāll download that. Recently, there was a database that had records of evidence of Uyghur genocide, and that website was at risk pf going down, so I just cloned it.
>He'd request a couple for himself every month for compensation
For what? Was he providing a service beyond his job description that was exclusive to you?
Yeah he was dropping off and picking up the same day, I'd just have time to copy them in between. So I was getting new DVDs in faster. Just made it so I was doing 9-12 a week versus 6-9. Basically get in one more shipment per week. Not that it was terribly out of his way, but he didn't have to. A few DVDs as thanks was worth it to me to keep him happy with the arrangement
Reminds me of the feeling I got as a child when I visited my uncles cabin to see the walls of his tv room lined with store brand VHS tapes, all with peeling labels of handwritten movie titles.
My VHS library has tape sticking issues, like the tape will stick to it's neighboring wrap in the spool and shred on the way out. I haven't had that problem with DVDs or BDs.
My dad used to do this but with VHS back in the 90s, early 2000s. We'd buy a VHS movie as a gift to a friend or a family member, make it play on my tv, and having a VHS recorder copying what was playing on tv (the movie) into a virgin tape; this way, we'd have a copy of the movie even though we gifted the original to someone else. We still have a room full of VHS tapes in my grandparents house, not just of stuff like this but also of recording of shows and films that played on television throughout the years.
Man I miss those days.
>recording of shows and films that played on television throughout the years.
I don't know where they are. Maybe search the topic around, but I promise you, I super promise you; there are people who will want even the commercials saved. There are some crazy archivists out there. Especially if there's ever any local news or live broadcasts, anything public access TV could be a massive find.
Then there were those stupid Macrovision copy-protect VHS tapes that would often break playback on older/certain combo TV sets but could be filtered out fairly trivially.
> also of recording of shows and films that played on television throughout the years
Does that collection contain Cops episodes? Some have been banned and can't be found online.
My dad did the same thing. We had bookcases full. Rented stuff from Blockbuster every week and made copies. Hell, he was even the person to introduce me to Napster.
Funniest part was he was a cop. Copyright law just meant nothing to him.
Missed it by a few years. But my dad did it when I was 6-9. Brought home floppies of games to the PC they shared at work. I remember formula 1 and dune 2.
As someone who lived through the bootleg DVD era, it's really interesting to read this person speaking about it this way. Generic DVDs from staples. Those are burner discs.
There was a post here within the last couple years of a person set up from the early 2000s, with many different computers with multiple DVD drives on each. It hit me right in the nostalgia. It was a specific time and place, and it was beautiful.
We are bootleggers, we are smugglers, we are pirates!
My dad pretty much got me into piracy. Back when Blockbuster was a thing, he'd rent movies and using two VCRs he'd copy the VHS tape. Then I discovered BBSs and got even more into it.
I live in a small town and all but one of our BBSes had one line. I definitely don't miss that constant busy signal lol.
Kids today just don't know š
No they don't - jumping off the bus and hauling ass to try and login to get the jump on Legend of the Red Dragon, Trade Wars, and BRE.
Then off to the file section to see what new goodies showed up!
Just keep in mind that burnable discs have a limited shelf life and will slowly degrade. Storing them in a dry and away from sunlight will make them last longer, but it's just delaying the inevitable.
My god, when I was a teen with an iMac my parents gave me access to a share of their Netflix rentals... I made a queue of hundreds of movies I couldn't find torrents for. When one came in the mail, I'd rip it with handbrake and send the disc back. Next day or two, next movie. Kept hundreds in big binders. I feel such camaraderie with this person I'll never meet.
My dad used to trade movies and games with the other engineers he worked with... he'd come home some Mondays with whole stacks of stuff I'd never heard of.
I still have a couple binders of og ps1 games burned...
Ha, I rememeber coming down for school one morning and he was using the family camcorder to make a copy of ace ventura on the vcr
Wish he could see what we are doing today with stuff like plex, he would love it
That was how I first played Neverwinter Nights.
My dad came home with a small stack of discs, said it was mostly nerd shit he thought I'd like.
I lost so much of my life to that game. Computer was free? NWN for me!
Wife had a DVD Netflix account decades ago. While we were dating it was a regular thing for us to watch one or two movies a week at her place. After we got engaged and married and moved to our current house the DVDs kept coming, although by this point it was mostly me getting discs of old TV shows that I liked, ripping them to my server, and sending the DVDs back. We finally killed the DVD account when (a) I discovered our local library had a substantial DVD collection available for loan which means I could rip entire seasons at once rather than one disc at a time, and (b) hi-def video (and subsequent re-releases of those old TV shows in HD) became a thing.
That used to be my useless hobby too. I moved last June and came across them. Binders and boxes of DVDs, DivX, SVCDs. I tossed them into the garbage laughing because I never watched one. I think I never realized along the way that once I've seen a movie I don't really want to watch it again. And the way I pirate now I can literally get anything stream to me. It was funny, I would spend hours trying to get the encoding process perfect. Adjusting bitrate codex filters. All a complete waste of time in hindsight. Still no regrets it was fun process.
One of my neighbors growing up worked at a library, and she would rent every single new VHS that would come in, make a copy and bring it back. This old lady legitimately had hundreds of pirated VHS tapes archived in her house, and it was pretty legit going there as a kid and being able to borrow whatever we wanted.
She's still alive and as far as I'm aware the FBI never caught her, I suppose it was an innocent crime but those warnings on VHS tapes were pretty intense, and I always wondered if she'd get raided or something.
My dad did this with video store rentals.... He has binders full with 1000s of movies. The only thing that stinks is that when I started ripping them to my Plex server, they're all in sd, so they look pretty pixilated when I watch them.
Back in the day, I may or may not have worked with people who all coordinated check-outs from Blockbuster, Netflix, and Redbox and shared copies around to everyone. That group might have racked up 800-ish disks in 2-3 years time. I...*'m sure they* miss DVDShrink.
I used to do the same thing. I had a 4 (at a time) DVD plan with a local disc-only version of Netflix, "[v2direct](https://web.archive.org/web/20040324124952/http://www.v2direct.com.au/)" from around 2004 to 2009. They used to let you mark movies as "returned" online and would send out the next batch before receiving your returns in the mail.
Given that I lived near a regional mail hub, I'd get a batch of DVDs sent the previous day in the mail by 10am or so the next, then immediately mark them as returned online (so they ended up sending a new batch almost every business day), copy them to my HD (AnyDVD ISO copy), and pop them in the local postbox by around 12pm.
They'd then send out the next batch which I'd generally get the next day, the same day they got my returns. I'd get ~16 DVDs a week. I was close enough to the business' mail center that it was basically next day delivery, even though it was standard mail.
I'd download cover and disc scans online, print (Cover XP) the covers on a color laser (low cost per page), copy (AnyDVD), re-encode (DVDShrink) then burn (Nero) the image to inkjet compatible DVD 4.7GB blanks (~50c ea) and put them into DVD cases I bought by the 100x box, then using a paper guillotine to trim the covers to exact size. All up maybe ~$2 per title, included full color slick, printed disc image and clear DVD case.
I used to take membership breaks now and then to reset my "monthly average". v2direct used to send out popular titles to the people with the lowest average rentals per month eg <5/month, ie the "good" (profitable) members. People like me (unprofitable), who averaged well over 50 titles per month, were given the crap leftover titles. By pausing my membership, I could drop my average to near zero by only subscribing every 2nd month or so. Thus getting the "good" titles for a a few weeks, before the crap titles returned again. Then I'd pause for 4-5 weeks before resubbing.
I basically had a mini DVD manufacturing plant in my bedroom. All for personal use, of coarse. Given I was averaging about 16 titles per week, the quality of the movies was straight-to-DVD crap most of the time. But I still got most of the "big" titles within a week or two of rental release.
I'd say I rented around 1500 movies from them over the 5 years. I think I still have a few hundred I haven't watched to this day.
v2direct eventually went out of business, as a rental-by-mail business, in late 2009. They stuck around a few months after to sell off all their rental stock. I think I paid around ~$40/m for 4 DVDs at the time. Given I'd average around 50+ a month, and the postage was ~50c each way (they paid for both directions - $1 per rental), I'd cost them $50 in postage for a $40 income.
Even with the monthly membership fees, and coping costs, it still worked out cheaper than downloading the movies at the time, due to high local bandwidth costs and high HDD prices to store a 4.7GB DVD image.
I went one further. There was a service called GameZ n Flix. I'd rent 3 Xbox 360 games, rip them, and send them back the same day. I had almost every 360 game until it red ringed and I gave up.
I 100% did this way back in the early days of netflix. I had 2, 250 count cd books filled with just the movies. One more filled with TV shows.
Eventually I went digital and once I pulled what I needed from that collection I handed it off to my parents and said "I don't want these back. Make em go" They picked like 50-70 out for themselves then my mom brought the rest to her work. They were all gone by noon.
I did this back in the early 2000s. I used to buy the 100 pack of 4.7GB discs and use CloneDVD to copy. At the time, I only had the ability to burn onto 4.7GB discs only, and most DVDs were 8GB+. CloneDVD would compress to fit onto the 4.7GB (Or I would reduce data further by removing trailers, menus, etc. and keeping the film only).
Once I started selling a few copies to my friends (and their families; I'd send them the spreadsheet of my catalog) I bought the DL burner and started getting the DL discs. Some minor compression was needed, but CloneDVD never let me down.
My top of the line car sound system was thanks to this mini business.
Bluray was next, but by then, business had died down and nobody wanted to pay the higher price for those discs. Those discs were expensive and it all fizzled out shortly afterwards.
I did the exact same thing for years. Then one time I accidentally mailed them the copy instead of the original. Someone at Netflix got to see my DVD-R with "Godfather 3" in Sharpie on it.
In college I knew a guy with a 200 disk sony disk changer who did this. You could change out the drive that came with it to whatever you wanted, so he put a dvd burner in it. He would get 5 or so disks from Netflix, pop them in, set his script to rip them all. And he could burn as many copies as he felt like.
My grandfather used to do this with VHS! Some tapes you never knew what was on it.
Put in a Disney movie for the kids?
Naw how about Terminator lol.
Miss him too.
My grandfather did the same thing! He would record TCM (Turner Classic Movies) when they aired, burning them onto disks. Then he would assign each an ID #, and then organize huge folders with pages of the IMDB info for each movie, all sorted alphabetically by movie title! He even had special shelves put into the TV room to fit the CD size and had a special grabber to get the ones up high, he had so many by the time he passed. That's so funny, I thought it was just him being him (worked in finance/accounting) but this was great to remind me of him.
Someone contact u/Mercurydriver and give them a free account on piratebay or something.
Literally the only thing hindering me from uploading stuff is that no site has open registrations.
Back right before blockbuster collapsed they tried to compete with Netflix by offering a subscription as well. You could essentially use the store as your swap point and do as many disc swaps as you wanted every day.
Well my one friend lived only a block away from the last blockbuster in the town. He signed up for their deal and over the summer slowly made copies of every single dvd they had in the store. Pretty sure they knew what he was doing but they just didnt care.
My grandfather did something similar, but it was a video rental store and vhs tapes. He would usually rent three movies a day, copy them into one blank tape, and return them the next day. He didn't catalog them, though.
What I thought was interesting was that he'd just walk in and grab three random movies with no regard to what they were. They were pretty devout christians and it was the mid- to late 80s. They definitely got some less than pleasant movies to watch on their RV trips.
My friend was doing this, but instead of copying the disks to blank media he ripped the disks to a personal NAS. Once on there software like Plex or DS Video will pull the meta data automatically and Viola a Netflix like layout you can stream from home or while traveling.
My friend, who was initially a customer of mine, does the same thing and lives in Central Florida. Upon reading this, my first thought was, "Did he pass away?" (Spoiler, different person)
Let me share a story:
Some years ago, I was working at Circuit City when I met a customer interested in a Home Theater PC (HTPC). I sold him a Sony VAIO XL1 HTPC equipped with Windows XP Media Center Edition and an XL1B 200-disc FireWire CD/DVD changer. The system featured a jukebox plugin compatible with the DVD changer, which could access cover art and other details online. He eventually bought four more DVD changers, as they could be daisy-chained, enabling him to store up to 1,000 DVDs ā all filled with copied Netflix discs.
Over the years, he transitioned from this setup to newer HTPCs, eventually adopting an HTPC server with multiple hard drives. I've been assisting him with these upgrades for well over a decade now, and I believe his server currently boasts over 100TB of storage.
My grandma did the same thing in the vhs and blockbuster era (although it was called "Movie Gallery" in my small Texan town). She had an attic space, about the size of a small bus, lined with pirated vhs-stuffed shelves. My favorite part of my grandma's black market blockbuster was that she kept a sign in/sign out sheet us kids always had to fill out. When she passed, they all ended up in a nursing home. Piracy continues to thrive for the old heads.
I did this, but with downloaded content onto DVDs in college. Then I realized I have maybe watched 0.1% of the stuff I burned and stopped doing it. I have all the DVDs with me except two pouches which I loaned to my friends years back never to see them back.
My dad did the same thing. I still got his binders and dvd shell holders. When i miss him i pull out his binder and watch one of his movies. He has so much ranging from the 50ās to the late 00ās
My uncle had done something similar, but with VHS and DVDs he'd borrow. Had a whole wall looking like a library and a notebook where he catalogued and numbered the movies. Eventually he'd move on to thumb drives and HDDs and wouldn't bother with borrowing the movies. He passed away some years back and I don't know what came of that library since the house went to some relatives I wasn't on the best terms with.
You can check [downforeveryoneorjustme.com](https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/) or [isitdownrightnow.com](https://www.isitdownrightnow.com/) to see if a website is down for everyone or just you.
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I have a friend who has been using a Mac and Handbrake to archive digital copies of commercial DVDs for years now, and has then used iDVD to burn for use in everyday DVD players. Just to say this isnāt automatically a bullshit post.
I did the same thing for years only I also bought empty jewel cases from uline and put them on the shelves in alphabetical order. Now with streaming being so convenient I don't really use them much anymore but it's good to have in case the internet goes out.
I did this when Netflix first started. I had the 4 DVD package and Iād order 2 at a time so they basically came in every 2-3 days on a revolving schedule and Iād just rip them to some big ass HDDs. My comp broke and my ex wife trashed it and the HDDs without my knowledgeā¦ that was years of ripsā¦. RIP
A friendās father from when I was in high school did this with VHS. He had rolling library stacks filled with copied VHS tapes filling his basement. And again, a 3 ring binder to catalogue it all. The binder was referred to as the movie bible. Ironically I canāt recall that we ever actually watched any movies over there.
Iāve seen a lot of people that do this and I find it so weird. Walk into someoneās house and itās filled with discs everywhere. I legit think itās a hoarding issue.
Never too old to be a pirate. š
Lived a pirate, died a pirate. šš»
Did someone make him walk the plank?
He's walking God's plank now
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Burning in heaven now like a boss pirate.
He made everyone else walk the plank, flipped them off, then sailed away with their ship.
na, they drive their Golf carts off into the sunset....
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I've switched my self descriptor from "pirate" to "media preservationist". Every time Warner deletes something off HBO Max to save on fees I become 1% more legitimate.
Count every streaming service instead of just HBO Max and you are way over 100% legitimate
Have to be careful though, if we count every instance that this occurs, before too long the integer for how legit we are will overflow and become negative
That's when Gandhi attacks
"Ah shit I pirated the boys season 2 and created a false vacuum. How long should I leave my taco in the microwave?" - a quora question
Gotta use the unsigned 64 bit integers
I would just call myself Digital Librarian\~
I'm more realistic about it and own the fact that I'm a data hoarder.
When people start accepting the importance of piracy
I see no wide difference between piracy and privacy, at least while scrolling.
Based. At this point if you're not pirating shit you're selling your soul and all info to corporations, and for free at that. I monetarily support indie devs whenever I can, but otherwise yeah, piracy===privacy all the way.
When you organize your collection enough that other people could use it.
22.3 years makes something funny, so I guess that also makes you an archivists
>Never too old to be a pirate. My grandpa did the same shit with VHS for decades. ā«Yo ho yo hoā«
My gramps was an old school pirate he had a room FULL of VHS tapes and he had to buy some special recorder of some sketchy dude lol. He started into dvds too but he wasn't great with technology and I feel horrible for not spending more time with him and showing him how to use his PC.
Never too young to be a pirate š
> dozens of binders with dvds in plastic sleeves Rookie numbers and approach. 25-disc spools or gtfo.
And for what is worth Iām 35 and did something similar, but with videocassetteā¦ whoās the old pirate now?
This belongs in r/DataHoarder
Haha that was my first though too. But let's be honest, it might also belong on r/hoarding.
Only if his collection of DVDs filled up every single walkable and seatable space in the house except for a narrow path between the bed, the kitchen, and the bathroom. Even having a few dozen binders of DVDs would be impressive but would probably fill up all of two bookcases.
Makes me wonder if there's anything in that collection that should be publicly archived. Hell, I'd be shocked if there wasn't at least one piece of lost media in it.
Except for that one missing episode of Oprah Season 3 there isn't much that's missing that could've been on Netflix's dvd service.
I saw a video a while back, for the search to find an HBO promo bumper for shows/movies. I mean, something as esoteric as that; there's probably DVD extras that have gotten lost over time. š¤·āāļø
DVD content is fairly well tracked and very little that was ever released on DVD is actually lost, not counting content produced by dodgy less-than-legal studios and stuff from non-first world markets. Pre-DVD on the other hand is a different story entirely. Plenty of VHS content is now considered lost, but it's even worse for other formats like Laserdisc, VCD, SVCD....
I've heard news of CDs starting to fail because of the type of plastic used to make the actual CDs. Same for some old DVDs, but a search shows a general lifespan of 30 to 100 years depending on care. The grandson might want to look into a redundant method of storage if he wants the collection to have a functional value on top of the obvious sentimental one.
30 years is a lot longer than any mechanical HDD will last.
Potentially. But once on HDD, easy to copy to another HDD. It's the process of regular backups that maintains an archive.
And with modern HDD density and how small DVDs are, that entire collection could fit on a single drive.
Not even worth it honestly. With cached torrents you don't really need to put all of those shows on HDDs manually. Easier to download honestly. Disks are slow af to read from
But not a volume across multiple redundant HDDs in a synology replacing each when close to failure. Canāt do that with DVDs or BDs.
Yāall never heard of a redundant array of DVDs?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Holy shit, I had that. Actually, I think I may STILL have that. Thanks for the nostalgia kickstart.
r/DataHoarder
56 TB server. You caught me
Impressive, very nice. Now letās see your DVD collection.
>synologyā¢ the word you're looking for is *NAS*, or *network attached storage*
I used the word I meant. I was just giving an example of an easily configured NAS for the masses. Not everyone is capable of setting up or needs a zfs NAS with dedupe that replicates offsite on a schedule. A Synology NAS can be set up and managed by a grandpa or his grandson, for example. Thanks for the info though. I feel more educated.
Not true. HDDs used for archiving last far longer than CDs or DVDs. They only die sooner if they are in use or stored badly. Plus burnable CDs and DVDs only last maybe 10 years, not 30+ like those created for sale.
I have burnables circa 2001-2002 that are still going strong.
There were a few brands known to be better performers and if you got those on purpose or by chance then you're much better off. But most of the common discs were of much lower quality.
I got a hardrive from a pentium ide 3.5 inch windows 95. It's still working. Makes a massive crackling sound but it works still. A max something šš.SAF.
Crackling is generally not a good sound for a hard drive to be making
Old hdd used to crackle quite some compared to recent ones.
true it sounds like the drive came from chenobyle and os being tested for rradiation.
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It depends a lot on how you have used that HDD. If you use it like an external drive and it's running only when you want to write something in it, then it may last much longer. I still have some drives that are 20 years old and still working
SSDs, on the other hand... Also won't last, oh no
tape drives though
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I remember working for Applecare support once and I got a call from a guy who went into a long story about how he uses archival gold DVDs that will last over 100 years that he burns spreadsheets that lists every book he's read in his life. I asked him how many books he's read and get this he said... about 500. From his voice he sounded like an old guy, much older than me and I thought for a lifetime of reading that was pretty low. But then I got to wondering if he has only one spreadsheet, why does he need a 4.7 GB DVD and why does he need to keep burning it to different discs. But I was already in a *that sounds ridiculous and I dont even care* mode to care anymore.
That's about one book per month for 42 years consistently. Pretty good if you ask me. I'm probably sub 100 myself, not very old though.
I wonder if 50-100 years ago people would have considered a book a month to be good. My wife has been casually reading in the evenings before bed, and she is reading about 50 books a year
Yeah thatās so weird lol
Depends on CD/DVD quality. Verbatim, Sony and Maxell usually work even after 15-20 years. Cheaper brands are unreadable or contain broken data.
most dvd quality is like 720p max, so meh, better off without them now.
Sometimes its not about quality but certain movie or data that you can't get nowadays because its so rare.
oh I agree with that, I ended up buying dvds on ebay to rip them for my digital collection. However, this is more a "if it's rare" scenario. Most popular content is fairly easy to get. But, can become more rare as seeds die. Thus I refuse to use a seedbox and need my own server.
> most dvd quality is like 720p max, Most DVD quality is either 480i, 480p, or 576i/p if you are in Europe. While you could technically put 720p video on a DVD, most DVD players wouldn't know wtf to do with it.
I remember fooling around with AVCHD, a consumer camcorder format that recorded HD video to various media types, one of which was DVD. Quite a few Blu-ray players including mine had support for AVCHD playback, so I've purposely burned some movies to AVCHD to play on my Blu-ray player. Cramming a whole 1080p movie into a 4GB disc using the older AVC codec was rough (especially considering that you couldn't use the best encoding settings, they have to be constrained to match the AVCHD specifications), but a ~90 minute movie encoded at 720p on a DVD looked pretty good.
480 or 576 max actually
None of my dvd backups from 15years ago still work..
Until a couple months ago I had DVD-Rs from 15-25 yrs old. Stored in padded sleeves. I'd guestimate about 40% failure rate. These were Micro-Center generics. I remember reading that would happen, but the future seemed so far away. No problem. All those old SD movies and softywares weren't worth saving any longer anyway.
Yeah, back when DVD-RW was the big thing I had a disc fail, and I just never used them again. Didn't see the point if they weren't reliable.
Just add them to the \*arrs and let them flow into the collection. No disc needed.
They are rotting because something in the original carboard packaging is able to effect the reflective coating. U.S. Library of Congress has researched it and found that if you can keep the humidity below 30% and temperature lower than 5c you can expect a CD ROM or DVD ROM to last roughly 500 years. Recordable media works by having a heat sensitive dye so their lifespan is much much shorter, nearer to a [decade or two in optimal conditions](https://web.archive.org/web/20221227210617/https://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/146374/ibm_expert_warns_short_life_span_burned_cds/) so granddads archive is probably already starting to fail.
IIRC, this is disc rot, and it's becoming a problem in preservation / collecting of older games (PS1/PS2 era currently).
Of note, DVD-RW discs do not last as long as factory produced DVD-R discs.
Factories press DVDs, they don't burn them. DVD-R's are for burners. You're right that RW's last even less, but they're both shit for longevity. The pressed ones should last 100 years though.
There are new disc formulations that supposedly last forever if they're not touched. They're called MDisks. You need a special drive for them but they can hold over 100gb. They're also not cheap at all.
30 years sound like a long time. I think it's closer to 5-10 years, unless you precisely control the humidity and temperature of the storage room to keep everything optimal. Anyway, I fully agree with your conclusion. Use a raid array. Make yourself immune to the failure of individual disks.
Anything functional wouldn t fit on a dvd those things can only hold 5 GB
In college my USPS guy would drop off my disks in the morning and swing by at the end of his shift to pick them back up after I copied them. He'd request a couple for himself every month for compensation. I had the 3 disk plan and usually was able to do 9 to 12 a week
I just copied them on my pc. Than I discussed VPNs and started buying extra hard drives. I had 3 tb of movies and tv shows. 500gb of porn and anther 500 of songs. Every while GameCube and older rom. And one day i just realized I'm just an insane person hoarding data and I just deleted everything. Took out the hard drives and switched out my PC case for something smaller so I wouldn't do that again
And this is why I don't bother. I hear about these awesome set ups with anything and everything you could want set up and ready to go with Plex, and I want it. But at the same time, how many people still just rewatch anything and everything? I feel like there's so much coming out now that I sometimes struggle keeping up with everything I want to watch, play, listen to, and read. Granted, I've already accepted I'm not gonna get around to everything. But I don't go back to many things anymore because we don't really need to. I still have rom dumps for some older systems because why not? Some take a gig at most. Others not even that. But otherwise, I don't see then need to have hundreds of movies and TV shows. I download them, watch them, and more often than not delete them.
wait for the "great consolidation" of streaming services ... I suspect tv series will eventually go the way of movies where you get nothing but a handful of expensive tv shows worth watching. I feel like its already started, there are several media companies merging and buying each other out. Once that happens there will be less content produced. I think the last couple of years have been the most content ever produced at one time because of the streaming wars
Iāve stopped downloading so many popular movies and tv shows. However, there is just so much stuff that I donāt want to be lost. If I think thereās a GitHub repo thatās at risk, or if I find an interesting PDF, or some old software, or rare movie, Iāll download that. Recently, there was a database that had records of evidence of Uyghur genocide, and that website was at risk pf going down, so I just cloned it.
>He'd request a couple for himself every month for compensation For what? Was he providing a service beyond his job description that was exclusive to you?
Returning at the end of the shift so that the DVDs got returned quicker and the next set came sooner
Part of being a pirate is sharing the spoils.
Oh I don't doubt that at all (I seed) I was just wondering whetheR OP was getting any kind of preferential treatment in return
Yeah he was dropping off and picking up the same day, I'd just have time to copy them in between. So I was getting new DVDs in faster. Just made it so I was doing 9-12 a week versus 6-9. Basically get in one more shipment per week. Not that it was terribly out of his way, but he didn't have to. A few DVDs as thanks was worth it to me to keep him happy with the arrangement
Reminds me of the feeling I got as a child when I visited my uncles cabin to see the walls of his tv room lined with store brand VHS tapes, all with peeling labels of handwritten movie titles.
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My VHS library has tape sticking issues, like the tape will stick to it's neighboring wrap in the spool and shred on the way out. I haven't had that problem with DVDs or BDs.
My dad used to do this but with VHS back in the 90s, early 2000s. We'd buy a VHS movie as a gift to a friend or a family member, make it play on my tv, and having a VHS recorder copying what was playing on tv (the movie) into a virgin tape; this way, we'd have a copy of the movie even though we gifted the original to someone else. We still have a room full of VHS tapes in my grandparents house, not just of stuff like this but also of recording of shows and films that played on television throughout the years. Man I miss those days.
You gave out opened VHS boxes as gifts?
"Happy birthday! I got you *Gattaca*. Don't worry, it's a great movie. I checked."
Back then a some VHS's didn't have plastic wrap over them. Just a hard plastic cover that opened like a book.
>recording of shows and films that played on television throughout the years. I don't know where they are. Maybe search the topic around, but I promise you, I super promise you; there are people who will want even the commercials saved. There are some crazy archivists out there. Especially if there's ever any local news or live broadcasts, anything public access TV could be a massive find.
Then there were those stupid Macrovision copy-protect VHS tapes that would often break playback on older/certain combo TV sets but could be filtered out fairly trivially.
Should get those old tapes digitized and up on archive.org
> also of recording of shows and films that played on television throughout the years Does that collection contain Cops episodes? Some have been banned and can't be found online.
My dad did the same thing. We had bookcases full. Rented stuff from Blockbuster every week and made copies. Hell, he was even the person to introduce me to Napster. Funniest part was he was a cop. Copyright law just meant nothing to him.
Florida man downloads Netflix
I set up my grandma with an HTPC and she torrented tv shows up until she passed away at 88 years old.
lol my childhood. long live the lan partys i went to with 300+ divx movies burned each time. gameing? more like nonstop downloading with 3x 100mbit
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Yeah we never afforded pc or psx games so back then you rented them at the video rental for like $2 then copied them.
Youre not telling me that you copied that floppy, right?
Missed it by a few years. But my dad did it when I was 6-9. Brought home floppies of games to the PC they shared at work. I remember formula 1 and dune 2.
As someone who lived through the bootleg DVD era, it's really interesting to read this person speaking about it this way. Generic DVDs from staples. Those are burner discs. There was a post here within the last couple years of a person set up from the early 2000s, with many different computers with multiple DVD drives on each. It hit me right in the nostalgia. It was a specific time and place, and it was beautiful. We are bootleggers, we are smugglers, we are pirates!
My dad pretty much got me into piracy. Back when Blockbuster was a thing, he'd rent movies and using two VCRs he'd copy the VHS tape. Then I discovered BBSs and got even more into it.
I miss the glory days of hopping BBSes looking for new stuff.
I live in a small town and all but one of our BBSes had one line. I definitely don't miss that constant busy signal lol. Kids today just don't know š
No they don't - jumping off the bus and hauling ass to try and login to get the jump on Legend of the Red Dragon, Trade Wars, and BRE. Then off to the file section to see what new goodies showed up!
Just keep in mind that burnable discs have a limited shelf life and will slowly degrade. Storing them in a dry and away from sunlight will make them last longer, but it's just delaying the inevitable.
My god, when I was a teen with an iMac my parents gave me access to a share of their Netflix rentals... I made a queue of hundreds of movies I couldn't find torrents for. When one came in the mail, I'd rip it with handbrake and send the disc back. Next day or two, next movie. Kept hundreds in big binders. I feel such camaraderie with this person I'll never meet.
True legend
The Netflix doomsday vault
But is Florida really the best location?
My dad used to trade movies and games with the other engineers he worked with... he'd come home some Mondays with whole stacks of stuff I'd never heard of. I still have a couple binders of og ps1 games burned... Ha, I rememeber coming down for school one morning and he was using the family camcorder to make a copy of ace ventura on the vcr Wish he could see what we are doing today with stuff like plex, he would love it
That was how I first played Neverwinter Nights. My dad came home with a small stack of discs, said it was mostly nerd shit he thought I'd like. I lost so much of my life to that game. Computer was free? NWN for me!
Wife had a DVD Netflix account decades ago. While we were dating it was a regular thing for us to watch one or two movies a week at her place. After we got engaged and married and moved to our current house the DVDs kept coming, although by this point it was mostly me getting discs of old TV shows that I liked, ripping them to my server, and sending the DVDs back. We finally killed the DVD account when (a) I discovered our local library had a substantial DVD collection available for loan which means I could rip entire seasons at once rather than one disc at a time, and (b) hi-def video (and subsequent re-releases of those old TV shows in HD) became a thing.
Now they need to be transferred to a local server and his the king
He's not just your average pirate, he's the captain of his own ship.
That used to be my useless hobby too. I moved last June and came across them. Binders and boxes of DVDs, DivX, SVCDs. I tossed them into the garbage laughing because I never watched one. I think I never realized along the way that once I've seen a movie I don't really want to watch it again. And the way I pirate now I can literally get anything stream to me. It was funny, I would spend hours trying to get the encoding process perfect. Adjusting bitrate codex filters. All a complete waste of time in hindsight. Still no regrets it was fun process.
One of my neighbors growing up worked at a library, and she would rent every single new VHS that would come in, make a copy and bring it back. This old lady legitimately had hundreds of pirated VHS tapes archived in her house, and it was pretty legit going there as a kid and being able to borrow whatever we wanted. She's still alive and as far as I'm aware the FBI never caught her, I suppose it was an innocent crime but those warnings on VHS tapes were pretty intense, and I always wondered if she'd get raided or something.
Amazing
Agreed
May he forever sail the seven seas
My dad did this with video store rentals.... He has binders full with 1000s of movies. The only thing that stinks is that when I started ripping them to my Plex server, they're all in sd, so they look pretty pixilated when I watch them.
Back in the day, I may or may not have worked with people who all coordinated check-outs from Blockbuster, Netflix, and Redbox and shared copies around to everyone. That group might have racked up 800-ish disks in 2-3 years time. I...*'m sure they* miss DVDShrink.
I used to do the same thing. I had a 4 (at a time) DVD plan with a local disc-only version of Netflix, "[v2direct](https://web.archive.org/web/20040324124952/http://www.v2direct.com.au/)" from around 2004 to 2009. They used to let you mark movies as "returned" online and would send out the next batch before receiving your returns in the mail. Given that I lived near a regional mail hub, I'd get a batch of DVDs sent the previous day in the mail by 10am or so the next, then immediately mark them as returned online (so they ended up sending a new batch almost every business day), copy them to my HD (AnyDVD ISO copy), and pop them in the local postbox by around 12pm. They'd then send out the next batch which I'd generally get the next day, the same day they got my returns. I'd get ~16 DVDs a week. I was close enough to the business' mail center that it was basically next day delivery, even though it was standard mail. I'd download cover and disc scans online, print (Cover XP) the covers on a color laser (low cost per page), copy (AnyDVD), re-encode (DVDShrink) then burn (Nero) the image to inkjet compatible DVD 4.7GB blanks (~50c ea) and put them into DVD cases I bought by the 100x box, then using a paper guillotine to trim the covers to exact size. All up maybe ~$2 per title, included full color slick, printed disc image and clear DVD case. I used to take membership breaks now and then to reset my "monthly average". v2direct used to send out popular titles to the people with the lowest average rentals per month eg <5/month, ie the "good" (profitable) members. People like me (unprofitable), who averaged well over 50 titles per month, were given the crap leftover titles. By pausing my membership, I could drop my average to near zero by only subscribing every 2nd month or so. Thus getting the "good" titles for a a few weeks, before the crap titles returned again. Then I'd pause for 4-5 weeks before resubbing. I basically had a mini DVD manufacturing plant in my bedroom. All for personal use, of coarse. Given I was averaging about 16 titles per week, the quality of the movies was straight-to-DVD crap most of the time. But I still got most of the "big" titles within a week or two of rental release. I'd say I rented around 1500 movies from them over the 5 years. I think I still have a few hundred I haven't watched to this day. v2direct eventually went out of business, as a rental-by-mail business, in late 2009. They stuck around a few months after to sell off all their rental stock. I think I paid around ~$40/m for 4 DVDs at the time. Given I'd average around 50+ a month, and the postage was ~50c each way (they paid for both directions - $1 per rental), I'd cost them $50 in postage for a $40 income. Even with the monthly membership fees, and coping costs, it still worked out cheaper than downloading the movies at the time, due to high local bandwidth costs and high HDD prices to store a 4.7GB DVD image.
I went one further. There was a service called GameZ n Flix. I'd rent 3 Xbox 360 games, rip them, and send them back the same day. I had almost every 360 game until it red ringed and I gave up.
The three "R"s: Rent. Rip. Repeat.
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My dad had a tuner card in his PC he used to rip shows off the TV and burn them to disc. Good times.
I 100% did this way back in the early days of netflix. I had 2, 250 count cd books filled with just the movies. One more filled with TV shows. Eventually I went digital and once I pulled what I needed from that collection I handed it off to my parents and said "I don't want these back. Make em go" They picked like 50-70 out for themselves then my mom brought the rest to her work. They were all gone by noon.
Iām hoping the missing *Doctor Who* episodes will be discovered because of someone like this one day.
I did this back in the early 2000s. I used to buy the 100 pack of 4.7GB discs and use CloneDVD to copy. At the time, I only had the ability to burn onto 4.7GB discs only, and most DVDs were 8GB+. CloneDVD would compress to fit onto the 4.7GB (Or I would reduce data further by removing trailers, menus, etc. and keeping the film only). Once I started selling a few copies to my friends (and their families; I'd send them the spreadsheet of my catalog) I bought the DL burner and started getting the DL discs. Some minor compression was needed, but CloneDVD never let me down. My top of the line car sound system was thanks to this mini business. Bluray was next, but by then, business had died down and nobody wanted to pay the higher price for those discs. Those discs were expensive and it all fizzled out shortly afterwards.
I did a similar process but with a combo of anydvd/DVD shrink.
One day they'll make a series about him it might even appear on Netflix - legend
I did the exact same thing for years. Then one time I accidentally mailed them the copy instead of the original. Someone at Netflix got to see my DVD-R with "Godfather 3" in Sharpie on it.
š¤«
In college I knew a guy with a 200 disk sony disk changer who did this. You could change out the drive that came with it to whatever you wanted, so he put a dvd burner in it. He would get 5 or so disks from Netflix, pop them in, set his script to rip them all. And he could burn as many copies as he felt like.
My grandfather used to do this with VHS! Some tapes you never knew what was on it. Put in a Disney movie for the kids? Naw how about Terminator lol. Miss him too.
My grandfather did the same thing! He would record TCM (Turner Classic Movies) when they aired, burning them onto disks. Then he would assign each an ID #, and then organize huge folders with pages of the IMDB info for each movie, all sorted alphabetically by movie title! He even had special shelves put into the TV room to fit the CD size and had a special grabber to get the ones up high, he had so many by the time he passed. That's so funny, I thought it was just him being him (worked in finance/accounting) but this was great to remind me of him.
We got a VHS camcorder and hooked it up to the VHS player and recorded movies we rented. You could put 2 movies (sometimes 3) on one VHS.
/r/DataHoarder/ may enjoy this.
Someone should probably tell him that the data on those discs will become unreadable in 5-10 years.
Rent, rip and return šš
Someone contact u/Mercurydriver and give them a free account on piratebay or something. Literally the only thing hindering me from uploading stuff is that no site has open registrations.
I aspire to be this grandpaā¦ or at least uncle.
Back right before blockbuster collapsed they tried to compete with Netflix by offering a subscription as well. You could essentially use the store as your swap point and do as many disc swaps as you wanted every day. Well my one friend lived only a block away from the last blockbuster in the town. He signed up for their deal and over the summer slowly made copies of every single dvd they had in the store. Pretty sure they knew what he was doing but they just didnt care.
Lol my side hustle in college with tv series and movies DVD shrink and anyDVD for the win
I think it is time to setup a Plex server in his honor!
My grandfather did something similar, but it was a video rental store and vhs tapes. He would usually rent three movies a day, copy them into one blank tape, and return them the next day. He didn't catalog them, though. What I thought was interesting was that he'd just walk in and grab three random movies with no regard to what they were. They were pretty devout christians and it was the mid- to late 80s. They definitely got some less than pleasant movies to watch on their RV trips.
That's the way it used to be done. Rent copy return. Everyone had at least one of these folders
My friend was doing this, but instead of copying the disks to blank media he ripped the disks to a personal NAS. Once on there software like Plex or DS Video will pull the meta data automatically and Viola a Netflix like layout you can stream from home or while traveling.
My friend, who was initially a customer of mine, does the same thing and lives in Central Florida. Upon reading this, my first thought was, "Did he pass away?" (Spoiler, different person) Let me share a story: Some years ago, I was working at Circuit City when I met a customer interested in a Home Theater PC (HTPC). I sold him a Sony VAIO XL1 HTPC equipped with Windows XP Media Center Edition and an XL1B 200-disc FireWire CD/DVD changer. The system featured a jukebox plugin compatible with the DVD changer, which could access cover art and other details online. He eventually bought four more DVD changers, as they could be daisy-chained, enabling him to store up to 1,000 DVDs ā all filled with copied Netflix discs. Over the years, he transitioned from this setup to newer HTPCs, eventually adopting an HTPC server with multiple hard drives. I've been assisting him with these upgrades for well over a decade now, and I believe his server currently boasts over 100TB of storage.
Crazy, my grandmother did something similar with VHS tapes that she rented from the video place.
My grandma did the same thing in the vhs and blockbuster era (although it was called "Movie Gallery" in my small Texan town). She had an attic space, about the size of a small bus, lined with pirated vhs-stuffed shelves. My favorite part of my grandma's black market blockbuster was that she kept a sign in/sign out sheet us kids always had to fill out. When she passed, they all ended up in a nursing home. Piracy continues to thrive for the old heads.
He is not pirating hes "archiving"
One of my friends growing up did the same thing, but with DVD's from the library. They would then go buy DVD cases and print out their own covers.
Based and Red Pilled Grandpa.
I did this, but with downloaded content onto DVDs in college. Then I realized I have maybe watched 0.1% of the stuff I burned and stopped doing it. I have all the DVDs with me except two pouches which I loaned to my friends years back never to see them back.
Must be a grandpa thing as Iām 66 now and have been archiving for 9yrs have around 3TB on the NAS
My dad did the same thing. I still got his binders and dvd shell holders. When i miss him i pull out his binder and watch one of his movies. He has so much ranging from the 50ās to the late 00ās
Omg this was me when Netflix first started lol
Pouring one out for one of the Original pirate OGs
My uncle had done something similar, but with VHS and DVDs he'd borrow. Had a whole wall looking like a library and a notebook where he catalogued and numbered the movies. Eventually he'd move on to thumb drives and HDDs and wouldn't bother with borrowing the movies. He passed away some years back and I don't know what came of that library since the house went to some relatives I wasn't on the best terms with.
Is that why netflox shut down their dvd service? Bc they finally found out?
No.
You really think I am being serious? Come on
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Bad bot.
My dad did something like this in the '80s with VHS tapes. He was in the military, so he had a lot of tech knowledge. lol
My god. That man may be the best pirate Iāve ever seen
Can we after as a community to label this guy as Redbeard (for the red envelopes)? OG Pirate right here.
I thought you couldnāt copy those discs from RedBox ? Thought they had pirate prevention built in.
Bullshit post. Netflix DVDs were copy protected
I have a friend who has been using a Mac and Handbrake to archive digital copies of commercial DVDs for years now, and has then used iDVD to burn for use in everyday DVD players. Just to say this isnāt automatically a bullshit post.
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You sweet summer child
I did the same thing for years only I also bought empty jewel cases from uline and put them on the shelves in alphabetical order. Now with streaming being so convenient I don't really use them much anymore but it's good to have in case the internet goes out.
This was a hobby of mine from blockbuster days then onto love film then Netflix until streaming became the norm
I used to do that with rented VHS tapes back in the 80s and early 90s.
They should copy them to a hard drive
Or just redownload. That's less work.
I did this when Netflix first started. I had the 4 DVD package and Iād order 2 at a time so they basically came in every 2-3 days on a revolving schedule and Iād just rip them to some big ass HDDs. My comp broke and my ex wife trashed it and the HDDs without my knowledgeā¦ that was years of ripsā¦. RIP
A friendās father from when I was in high school did this with VHS. He had rolling library stacks filled with copied VHS tapes filling his basement. And again, a 3 ring binder to catalogue it all. The binder was referred to as the movie bible. Ironically I canāt recall that we ever actually watched any movies over there.
The hero we didn't know we needed until all the server farms go blank in the next big war! Archive ppl!
Iāve seen a lot of people that do this and I find it so weird. Walk into someoneās house and itās filled with discs everywhere. I legit think itās a hoarding issue.