I know the answer varies for different collections and the DVD's within it.....

But I have a 380 disc DVD collection of 100% store purchased Hollywood DVD's. Nothing special, just various new releases and your standard crop of $100m budgeted super star blockbusters from the past few years.

I want to back them all up to VIDEO_TS folder format.

Just guesstimate for me.....how much space do you think i'll need to hold the entire collection? :rolleyes:

I'd guess about 2.6 tb. since you are dumping the whole iso file. Most disks are full 8.5 gigs. Some older ones are around 4.5 gigs. Sisnce you said you have a lot of blockbusters those tend to run large so I estimated around 7gigs per disk. 7x380 = 2.6tb. What do you plan on using to watch these? How do you plan on organizing them on the hard drive?

Also, do you plan on backing them up?

It'll be a RAID5 coming from a Thecus N5200. Four rooms have custom built HTPC's using the D.VINE silver cases. One 12-seat movie theater with Apple MAC Pro feeding a projector. The mac will use SMB to get the files. and finally 2 guestrooms will probably use some sort of media player (have'nt decided what kind yet since those rooms are low on priority list)

2.6TB??? that sucks. I was hoping it would be under 2TB since i was going to buy five 500GB drives for the thecus raid5 setup. I thought most hollywood discs were 4.7GB DVD's, not 8.5gb.

You could definitely save some space if you just ripped the movie part. But I would go for a higher number to give you more flexibility in the future, etc. Space goes by pretty quickly with video. I'll bet you could get it under 2TB if you just ripped the movie and not all the other crap on the disc. But you may not want to do that. I think the 7gb/disc estimate is pretty fair if maybe slightly on the higher side. I usually think about 5-6gb/movie but I'm just ripping the movie and I watch a lot of foreign or older films which may not be dual layer, etc, smaller with more extras crammed in so the movie only is less.

i agree with chris as i am cutting as we speak to a temporary drive. yes you can extract the movie only and they reduce a lot in size but i think since you own 380 dvd's the liklihood of buying more as time progresses is high, hence the extra need for space. also remember you will want to put music, pictures, home movies etc...the comment to remember here as in all things computer based

more is...more

you may want to wait as i am for the true arrival of penpendicular drives this year. you can expect 1TB drives the spring/summer. from memory, some drive makers are predicting 1.6tb drives by next year. that will mean you can put 4 1tb drives in your array. i started to look into remote backup options and there are a few out there. a word of caution tho, depending on raid 5,as i am sure you are aware, is not good enough. a lot of people believe, for some reason, namely marketing, that the only thing that can wallop a raid 5 array is a nuclear strike. i wish that were so...it just isnt true. as a small tip it is worth staggering disk purchases for arrays. the last thing you want is 4 drives from the same batch. because if there is a problem, the liklihood of a failed batch increases. you get 2 disk failures, you are well and truly screwed. what i will be doing is backing up pictures, etc...the movies i will put down as a risk i have to take. as an aside it takes about 20 minutes to iso copy a movie....so it might be worth bringing 1 or 2 to work, and let them burn in the background...assuming you are allowed of course ;)

Good replies guys,
A full DVD disc backup is what I need, including all menus and special features. Those are just as important to me as the movie itself.

The game plan was to end up with (2) thecus boxes both with (5) drives @ 500gb/ea. This would yield me 4 terrabytes @ raid5. I only wanted to invest in one of the thecus boxes (2tb) today to hold what I currently have and get the second one later to accomodate the movies i buy in the future.

Now, that staggered drive purchase to avoid a bad batch sounds like a smart thing to do. The only problem is, to do a raid5 you need at minimum three drives so that will be 3 from the same batch no matter what. Well heck, if thats the case then i might as well g'head and buy 2 more.

As for buying 1.6tb or 1tb drives...or even 750gb drives...it's hard to justify the costs.

For instance, the cheapest 750gb SATAII drive you can buy today (december 29th, 2006) is $330 bucks + shipping. However, you can buy a 500gb SATAII drive today for $129 free shipping. That's 150% of the price for only 50% capacity increase. That means if I buy five 750gb drives i'm looking at $1,650 vs. buying five 500gb drives for only $650. That's a $1000 difference. I just can't justify that. Psssssh, for a grand can get a 2TB Terastation! So if their doing this with 750GB drives, what on earth are they going to price the 1TB drives at?? This means I will have to wait 1.5 years for things to make economical sense for a simple estimated 450 disc DVD collection. That's 18 months of getting out my warm bed to simply change the DVD disc, flipping through 4 dvd album books to find a movie, and hoping the DVD is clean and not scratched........NOT HAPPENING. *smile* 500gb drives and two thecus boxes make more sense today and for the foreseable next 18 months.

Thank you guys for your help,

I have begun the slow process of backing up my DVD collection. I have yet to come across a disc that is smaller then 7GB. They are all between 7-8.5GB in size. I'm simultaneously backing them up to my Thecus N5200 using two HTPC's. Takes about 20 minutes per run so it looks like I'll be done by next wednesday or so. not bad.

Shannon, I was curious as to what software you are using to backup your DVDs?

I use MyMovies (www.mymovies.name).

It's free....however, please paypal a small donation to the developer as a token of appreciation.

Thank you guys for your help,

I have begun the slow process of backing up my DVD collection. I have yet to come across a disc that is smaller then 7GB. They are all between 7-8.5GB in size. I'm simultaneously backing them up to my Thecus N5200 using two HTPC's. Takes about 20 minutes per run so it looks like I'll be done by next wednesday or so. not bad.

I've found that the only movies that are smaller than 7GB are old movies that are re-released on DVD. I think this is simply because they don't have all the extra content that the majority of recent released movies have.

The one benefit I found of extracting the movie only is the fact that you don't have to wade through all the fluff, and the forced chapter views (such as the FBI Warning, etc.)
But to each his own... I'm currently looking into media servers myself, as I have around 600 DVD's in my collection, and it's steadily increasing (and taking up waaaay too much space).

Good replies guys,
A full DVD disc backup is what I need, including all menus and special features. Those are just as important to me as the movie itself.

For instance, the cheapest 750gb SATAII drive you can buy today (december 29th, 2006) is $330 bucks + shipping. However, you can buy a 500gb SATAII drive today for $129 free shipping. That's 150% of the price for only 50% capacity increase. That means if I buy five 750gb drives i'm looking at $1,650 vs. buying five 500gb drives for only $650. That's a $1000 difference. I just can't justify that. Psssssh, for a grand can get a 2GB Terrastation! So if their doing this with 750GB drives, what on earth are they going to price the 1TB drives at?? This means I will have to wait 1.5 years for things to make economical sense for a simple estimated 450 disc DVD collection. That's 18 months of getting out my warm bed to simply change the DVD disc, flipping through 4 dvd album books to find a movie, and hoping the DVD is clean and not scratched........NOT HAPPENING. *smile* 500gb drives and two thecus boxes make more sense today and for the foreseable next 18 months.

Shannon all good points indeed...what you can consider is buying the drives from 2 different suppliers to avoid the batch issue..but it is a conundrum, no doubt. to be fair to the disk drive manuf, disk failures are rarish and they do a 5 year guarantee typically, so like all things...'you place yer bets and take yer chances'. you are exactly right on the price, but you can expect that the price of the 750's will drop once the new sizes come out. currently there is one maker out there, and they are maximising profits and good luck to them.

i think what you are experiencing is where we are all at, when is the right time to buy....its the 50 million dollar question...it looks like you have reached that decision...and that decision is ease of use from your bed LOL...if you are looking at 18 months buying cycle, i would not be too botherer TBH, even if you could not get them all on the drives, you certainly will get the vast majority of them online.

as an aside the one thing i regained was space (even burning the favourite ones i have done)...dvd's are a pain in the ass, storing, stacking, finding...and lets be honest they are not pretty. i have lost count of the times either my son has decided to eat one or you do the sherlock holmes trick of back tracking when someone put the disk in the drive into the current dvd case they opened...the dvd chain and chase begins...i wont get into the gender politics of this issue LOL... ;)

i think you have made a good decision. personally i am a bit of an infrant slut, but its all about ease of use to me on the movie selection, the harware is, well, just hardware to deliver your product...


oh and here is my final parting gift as a new year present....1080p

remember the bluray/hd debacle where each group is getting all school yardish on which is better...


this is all hiding one major issue...movies will be approx 15 -25 GB EACH for 1080p....LOL

so if you think we have space issues now...wait till the burning of these puppies begins!!!

good luck to you...let us know how you get on...

For instance, the cheapest 750gb SATAII drive you can buy today (december 29th, 2006) is $330 bucks + shipping. However, you can buy a 500gb SATAII drive today for $129 free shipping. That's 150% of the price for only 50% capacity increase. That means if I buy five 750gb drives i'm looking at $1,650 vs. buying five 500gb drives for only $650. That's a $1000 difference. I just can't justify that. Psssssh, for a grand can get a 2TB Terastation! So if their doing this with 750GB drives, what on earth are they going to price the 1TB drives at?? This means I will have to wait 1.5 years for things to make economical sense for a simple estimated 450 disc DVD collection. That's 18 months of getting out my warm bed to simply change the DVD disc, flipping through 4 dvd album books to find a movie, and hoping the DVD is clean and not scratched........NOT HAPPENING. *smile* 500gb drives and two thecus boxes make more sense today and for the foreseable next 18 months.

Check ebay for drives...

I bought 3 750 gig drives for 250-260...

Harddrives are one of the few computer related items you actually can save money buying from ebay... Don't even bother with video cards...

You might also want to wait just a bit before purchasing the drives. I
think it was Seagate that announced a 1TB disk at the CES show.
Once it gets released, the 750's will no longer be the top end, and
you will probably see the price drop considerably. You always pay
a premium for the top of the line.

buz

Some comments:
1) RAID 5 should be just fine. If you do get a drive that fails, immediately replace it. Since you're buying 10, just buy 11 to have the spare on hand. As long as you get another day or so before the second drive fails, you'll be fine. And, if something really bad happens, well, you've still got the original 380 DVDs to reconstruct from after all.

2) If you're really after price per GB optimization, then why limit yourself to 5 disk RAID boxes? 3Ware, for instance, makes 12 disk RAID 5 cards. The Thecus N5200 goes for almost $700 - that makes $1400 for the 2 boxes running 10 disks. You'd be better off with a computer and that 3ware PCI board, and then you could run 12 disks.

3) You're currently looking at $1450 for one box with 5 drives to hold the 380 disks. For that kind of money, you could get a Sony DVP-CX777ES DVD changer (holds 400 disks), and the Escient SE-D1 controller. And then no software copying, etc.
If you're looking for future expansion, Escient makes the DVDM-100 unit, which can control 1200 disks on 3 changers (and can use cheaper changers, too). BOth Escient units will automatically catalog the disks by accessing the web, and display cover art for each, as well as provide pretty good searching capabilities. Will save you many hours of copying DVDs.

I use an Escient DVDM552 which controls 5 of the Sony ES777 DVD changers. The
big problem with the Escient changers, is their database, it is really bad. I have
my 5 changers full, and it finds most of my disks, but they have no consistency
in the data in their database. For example, I have the complete sets of many
tv series. Lets say you have season sets of "TV Show". They might have
them listed like this:

TV Show First Season
TV Show Season Two
TV Show Season 3
TV Show 4th Season

So you can get later seasons showing up before earlier seasons in the list.
So for the above example season 3 would show up before season 2, and
Season 4 shows up first in the list
The other thing they mess up is the genre, you might find one season in SciFi, and
another in Action. You can modify the fields of the entries, but for what you
pay for these units, they should do a better job with their database.

buz