Archive/storage space options

[robinson]

I never thought that I would find so many interesting things to record from TV (the keyword favorites is a dangerous feature). Initially I got SageTV to only replace my old VCR, and now 300GBs later, my drives are full.

The really nice thing about having a large collection is that there will always be something available, no matter what you are in the mood to watch. I hardly ever see live TV anymore, and it is great.

I archived some files to DVDs, but that is rather slow process, and I don't really need such "permanent" archive for too many videos. I looked at a variety of archive/backup tape drives, but the ones that have good reviews (reliable) are really expensive (few thousand dollars). I don't need to have the files available inline (not sure if that is the correct term), as long as I can copy them to the hard-disk as needed for viewing.

I've read several posts from users here that mentioned having multiple capture boards -- how did you solve your storage problems?

I've seen external USB hard-drive cases advertised that have a removable tray to which one can attach internal inexpensive IDE hard-drive and use it as a high-capacity removable drive. Additional tray is usually just around $10. There are few of them, for example:
http://www.usbmax.com/DK-9U2F_DK-9_R...ooling_Fan.cfm
http://www.firewiremax.com/fire-wire...remcaskit.html
http://www.usbmax.com/USBG-NU410B_Du...to_USB_2.0.cfm

Has anyone tried something like that? Would that be the best or most economical option?

R.

[dvd_maniac]

I have 4x400GB raid-5 and 2x120GB SATA raid-0 and 2x400GB drives without raid.

All together I have a little over 2TB of space. And I am SURE that many others here have even more. I encode almost all of my recordings into small xvid/Nero AVC files. I also have encoded my entire DVD collection and placed them on my PC, right now I am about half space used.
I use an external USB HDD enclosure I got at CompUSA for $50.00 to archive my Important stuff onto. I use my old 4x250GB drives I had. I am about to run out of backup space and I do NOT want to buy anymore Hard drives until prices come down a bit more. I am thinking about dvd-r's at this point.

[Kanati]

I pour everything off to dvd as I need to. I rarely keep anything that I don't REALLY want though.

[robinson]

I have Nero, but never used the Recode program. In a way I purchased my MPEG card to avoid recoding since that takes way too much time. I use either DVD Long or Extra Long Play for movies or CVD for other stuff. CVD is compatible with DVD-Video, so even transcoding is not needed for that format.

Moving things to DVD is probably most cost-effective, but my problem is that I will not want to store most of the things permanently, so I would be moving things to DVDs just to make room on the hard-drive and throwing DVDs out.

[Kanati]

I hate having to recode things too, but I've found that a combination of a few REALLY quick programs seem to be a good compromise. WinAVI to convert to .VOB file EXTREMELY quickly compared to the competition (still don't know how they can do it so quickly). It even converts divx files just as quick. Video ReDo to chop the commercials out of sage recorded tv shows at somewhere around 1000fps. And DVDComposer (a find from last night) for complex dvd menuing, or Nero to just drop the vob files onto a dvd. MyDVD is also very quick if the file doesn't need remuxing.

Of course as you say, that's only good if you want to permanently keep things. If not then it's a waste. You could use rewritables however. I have a spindle of rewritables just for "temp" stuff. Those don't get editing at all and I just toss stuff on there to make room (I've only got 400 gig in my sage box right now) and when the spindle starts running low I go back and decide if I really want to keep any of that stuff or not, copy it off if I do, and erase the discs of things I don't want to keep.

[robinson]

Kanati, I gave your recommendation a try and have been using a bunch of DVD+RWs for about a month -- it is not bad. I don't really do any conversion other than cutting out commercials with VideoReDo sometimes. I basically just move the native MPEG-2 file(s) to DVD+RW and when I am ready to watch, I can play the video directly from the DVD.

But I also ordered one of the external HD cases with removable trays (found one for about $50 with extra trays about $12 each). The external connection is USB2 and internally it uses standard ATA. Almost every week there is internal IDE HD on sale and you can get 200GB for about $50 with rebates. I can't often use the full 4.5GB of DVD, so the HD is more efficient that way, and the cost per GB is not that much different compared to DVD+RW media. So far no problems. What I especially like is that physically it takes much less space than over 40 DVD+RWs I'd need to store that many files.