Storing Massive Movie Collection

[jenkins4president]

RobertX, I don't have any library DVDs. All my movies and TV shows are stored on my hard drive, an accumulation of more than 3 year's worth of downloads from TPB.

[shirepirate]

I have had 2 external HDDs in the past, a 500GB and the 3TB that I dismounted to use internally. I dismounted them both for the same reasons: using a drive through USB doesn't even come close to offering the speeds you can acheive when accessing the files through an internal SATA connection (especially if you're talking about connection all your external HDDs to USB hubs, ouff, that must be slow). Second reason is that the drives would produce so much heat in those enclosures, they'd be reaching temps of 70C which isn't ideal when you want to do everything you can to prolong the life of your hardware (and incidentally whatever is stored on it).

your concern of speed and heat production is moot. drives are not sold in enclosures that would risk over-heating in any normal temperature environment, especially good name brand drives with good reviews. if you're that worried about it you could run a fan on them, but it isn't necessary. you could plug one in and not worry about it for years.
as for speed the inhibiting factor in your file transfer would very likely not be the maximum speed of USB 2.0 (60 megabytes per second), but the speed of the drive held in the enclosure of the external drive and the speed of your internal drive that contains your operating system. there are also the options of USB 3.0 and eSATA transfer vs. USB 2.0, but it's my logical guess this would not benefit the file transfer speed of movies significantly at all (neither would storing them on an internal drive for transfer to another internal drive). you won't be transferring them much anyway, so i don't quite comprehend how that's a major concern. if you have the extra drive bays internal hard drives of any size tend to be cheaper than external hard drives when it comes to the dollar/storage space ratio, so may as well take advantage of that first, but obviously you'd be sacrificing slight portability. i'd still recommend 4TB external drives from a well known name brand like Seagate or Western Digital.

However, I like your idea of XBMC idea but I know absolutely nothing about it.

I'm interested in both XBMC and this idea. Would you mind walking me through it? It would be nice to have the films readily available without having to transfer anything...

to see what XBMC is all about all you have to do is download it and show it which folder you keep your films in, it does the rest automatically.
http://xbmc.org/

to use XBMC with your tv you'd have to have a piece of hardware capable of running it connected to your tv. this could be a very long HDMI cable running from your main desktop, or a small home theater pc desktop attached next to your tv (capable of recognizing your collection of films no matter what drive in the house they are located on, networked or not, as long as they are connected to a pc that is in turn connected to the local area network), or a small android computer attached to the tv that's main purpose is to act as a media center (there are dozens of varieties of these available online).

a good controller for a home theater setup is the wireless xbox 360 controller for windows, but there are also many remotes that can connect to a pc.

[RobertX]

RobertX, I don't have any library DVDs. All my movies and TV shows are stored on my hard drive, an accumulation of more than 3 year's worth of downloads from TPB.

By library DVDs, I meant ones I borrow from the library. I find it fun to rip DVDs onto my hard drive. It gives instant pleasure!

Anyhow, I'm sort of the old school type. I've burned DVDs only since 2008, and external storage in 2010. Before those, I use CD-Rs as VCDs.

I'm chickenshit when it comes to downloading movies.

[jenkins4president]

your concern of speed and heat production is moot. drives are not sold in enclosures that would risk over-heating in any normal temperature environment, especially good name brand drives with good reviews. if you're that worried about it you could run a fan on them, but it isn't necessary. you could plug one in and not worry about it for years.

Both enclosures were Seagate and WD drives. They were both reaching temps of 70C after idling for a day or two. I took them out put them both inside the case and they have never gone above 32C since that day.

I'd rather take that precaution. It's just playing with fire to me to deliberately leave a drive in an environment where you see it's heating up that much. Almost asking for it to fail. I figure, we can't do much to prevent mechanical drives from failing in the long run but why not do the best for what we can do, and that's providing them with cool ventilation. And besides, after that days, the idea of using external enclosures for desktops on a permanent basis seems tedious.

as for speed the inhibiting factor in your file transfer would very likely not be the maximum speed of USB 2.0 (60 megabytes per second), but the speed of the drive held in the enclosure of the external drive and the speed of your internal drive that contains your operating system.

Can you re-explain this? I don't understand what you mean.

you won't be transferring them much anyway, so i don't quite comprehend how that's a major concern

I would. When I finish downloading movies (8-10Gb each) I copy them to my media HD (3TB) then delete them off my main OS drive (1TB). Sicne I made the transition (instaleld that exnetrnal HD as an internal), I noticed that the transfer speeds signifcantly increase, as well as the time it takes to load the folder contents on the drive. So it's not trivial. Especially since I use a flash drive to watch them on TV. Transfering from an external HD to my USB flash drive takes much longer than transfering the film from the drive being used as an internal. And when the films are 8-10GB, waiting 10 min to copy to flash drive (this is how long it takes now) is long enough...

but obviously you'd be sacrificing slight portability.

Portability is the last thing on my mind. These drives will rarely be moved.

My board has six SATA ports. This is how they are being used:

SATA 0 - Local Disk (1TB)
SATA 1 - Local Disk Backup (1TB)
SATA 2 - Media Drive (Contains a single folder with all video files) (3TB)
SATA 3 - Software Drive (Contains all important software such as Windows Operating Systems, Office Suites, etc.) (230GB)
SATA 4 - Optical Drive
SATA 5 - Rosewill Multi Card-Reader

With that being said, I have no more room unless I replace some items.

if you have the extra drive bays internal hard drives of any size tend to be cheaper than external hard drives when it comes to the dollar/storage space ratio

Maybe it's just because I shop on Newegg, but this isn't what I've seen. I've seen 4TB external enclosures sell for 150$ and then bare 4TB drives go for 170$.

to see what XBMC is all about all you have to do is download it and show it which folder you keep your films in, it does the rest automatically.
http://xbmc.org/

I'll try it out thanks.

to use XBMC with your tv you'd have to have a piece of hardware capable of running it connected to your tv. this could be a very long HDMI cable running from your main desktop, or a small home theater pc desktop attached next to your tv (capable of recognizing your collection of films no matter what drive in the house they are located on, networked or not, as long as they are connected to a pc that is in turn connected to the local area network), or a small android computer attached to the tv that's main purpose is to act as a media center (there are dozens of varieties of these available online).

thanks but this wasn't at all what I had in mind. I don't want to make any adjustments to the TV. I want everything to be commingled around the PC desk and keep the living room area tidy and just pop a flash drive in when needed.

[JustJay]

For what it is worth as just another person willing to share you have the perfect scenario for an XBMC install. There are others out there, MediaPortal, LinuxMCE (if you are feeling adventurous). I have tried many and XBMC, to me, is the best.

I understand what you are saying, you have this fancy SmartTV (21st century oxymoron for sure) that has these native capabilities and it seems like a pretty sweet deal. But I assure you if you install a media center front end you will never look back. In fact, I guarantee you will only look forward, at all the other capabilities this little program can offer both you and your family.

My current setup is running XBMC off a Zotac ZBOX AD11. It is only about 4 inches square and about 2 inches thick. It will play anything I throw at it, which I do, from a server running in my basement. My server is headless so I remote desktop into it use it for also for all my downloading since it is running anyway. In my case I use uTorrent with RSS feeds for the TV shows we like and movies I just pick and choose. Then all I have to do is 'move' them from the download folder to my movies folders that XBMC uses. No copying multi-gig files, just cut and paste. Next time I launch XBMC it auto-scans the folders in the background adding any new content to the library.

Now, where XBMC and the like really take off is in the presentation. The incredible integration of movies, music and TV along with the artwork is something to behold. When my less techies friends see it they are simply amazed. Watch whatever you want whenever you want. Having people over and want to get the party started? Launch XBMC and go into music and 'party mode' and have it randomly play from your music library indefinitely. Leave it displaying band photos, bio and CD art, or fire up some of the visualizations. Milkdrop is preferred by most and almost hypnotic. Or, leave the music going and fire up a picture slideshow. We do this all the time. A great use for all those digital pictures that end up on a virtual top shelf in the closet of the spare bedroom.

The Zotac ZBOX comes with a remote that will work out of the box and if the tiny computer still bothers you it has a VESA mount to attach to the back of TV's and includes a USB IR receiver you can set some where. Otherwise, the Zotac has a built in IR receiver.

I got the AD11 for $129 (Canadian) and put a small SSD drive in for fast boot. Running a bare bones Windows 7 back end but you can get even faster boot by going with a Linux or OpenElec distro but I don't think that is necessary.

Anyway, as you can tell I am really happy with XBMC. It can seem a bit intimidating at first but the wiki pages are very detailed and it is pretty intuitive. Hell, you are already downloading movies and building PC's so you are ahead of a lot of the population.

JustJay

[shirepirate]

Both enclosures were Seagate and WD drives. They were both reaching temps of 70C after idling for a day or two. I took them out put them both inside the case and they have never gone above 32C since that day.
I'd rather take that precaution. It's just playing with fire to me to deliberately leave a drive in an environment where you see it's heating up that much. Almost asking for it to fail. I figure, we can't do much to prevent mechanical drives from failing in the long run but why not do the best for what we can do, and that's providing them with cool ventilation. And besides, after that days, the idea of using external enclosures for desktops on a permanent basis seems tedious.

a drive receives less ventilation inside a computer case. that's why they have fans. i should think this is obvious. the temperatures you've mentioned (upwards of 50C) are not normal at all for any drive, especially when idle. none of my drives, internal or external, have ever reached a temp above the mid 40s C. perhaps you live in a rather hot climate? at any rate, this is not a danger you'd expect to face purchasing an external drive.

if you aren't keen on the idea of multiple external drives next to your desktop, that would be a reason to go with internal, but you've mentioned you don't even have an available bay at this point. they're quite aesthetically pleasing these days and it shouldn't be much of a concern when it comes to space consumption or clutter, but to each their own preference. you mentioned portability not being a concern, so a permanent desktop external hard drive wouldn't be all that cumbersome.

Can you re-explain this? I don't understand what you mean.

I would. When I finish downloading movies (8-10Gb each) I copy them to my media HD (3TB) then delete them off my main OS drive (1TB). Sicne I made the transition (instaleld that exnetrnal HD as an internal), I noticed that the transfer speeds signifcantly increase, as well as the time it takes to load the folder contents on the drive. So it's not trivial. Especially since I use a flash drive to watch them on TV. Transfering from an external HD to my USB flash drive takes much longer than transfering the film from the drive being used as an internal. And when the films are 8-10GB, waiting 10 min to copy to flash drive (this is how long it takes now) is long enough...

hm. i'm thinking perhaps the 3TB drive you mention was and is failing or soon-to-die. the "time it takes to load folder contents," as you say, should be instantaneous. this should take less than a second (it does on all my externals). as for transfer speed, if I were to try to transfer a 12GB film from the internal drive (which is at least 5 years old on this machine) to one of the externals, it takes about 5-6 mins consistently over USB 2.0.

but I don't do that, I download directly to my external drives whether it be via torrent or usenet or direct download. because then they don't require being moved again to a different drive.

the point I was trying to make is I don't see you increasing transfer speed significantly at all by favoring an internal drive vs an external drive over USB 2.0 or 3.0. transferring them to a flash drive to plug into your tv every time you want to watch something is a slow and almost comical solution. there are simply much better ways to setup a home media center.

Maybe it's just because I shop on Newegg, but this isn't what I've seen. I've seen 4TB external enclosures sell for 150$ and then bare 4TB drives go for 170$.

I wouldn't shop there if you have a choice. they're often more expensive than the competition unless something is on a special sale. i've bought most of my things on Amazon.

thanks but this wasn't at all what I had in mind. I don't want to make any adjustments to the TV. I want everything to be commingled around the PC desk and keep the living room area tidy and just pop a flash drive in when needed.

if that's the setup you're looking for, with no additional hardware placed near the tv, a long hdmi cable or an HD wireless transmitter are what you would need. the latter does not have an awesome range, but this is an example of the type of product you'd be looking for:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AKYVMG2

[hireshi]

I run my own website, where I upload and stream Asian movies and shows.
I use external hard drives and usb. Mostly only 1TB + drivers or 32gig usbs.
Add a few dozen of each and you've got quite a collection.

Before asking, you should know that storing that many movies, not to mention in high def, isn't gonna be cheap.

[jenkins4president]

Before asking, you should know that storing that many movies, not to mention in high def, isn't gonna be cheap.

Yes. Sadly, I found out the hard way. I never planned for my collection to get this big. It just skyrocketed when I made the switch to HighRes films to accomodate my new TV.

About four years ago, I was first introduced to piracy and began downloading 700MB films to burn on DVDs for playback on my 360 and DVD player. Then, when I started trying to get higher quality films, I realized my Xbox couldn't play all file types, so I stuck with the standard def files.
Eventually, we got a new TV and I tried those big high res files and they worked while using a USB. One thing led to another and I never delete my files I download so over time, I accumulated 900 movies (my current sum) which is around 3TB.

I'm in a stressful predicament because I really don't wanna spend a lot to keep storing my movies but I want to keep downloading. I'm tempted to just delete them on the fly after watching them but that would make me so sad; I love having a repertoire. I'm a hoarder sadly...

[hireshi]

This one (1TB) costs about $65 USD.

You could also search cheaper ones on ebay. They aren't all that expensive if you know where to look. In my neck of the woods, 1TB could easily go for $100+ in a normal electronics store.
You could always upload your files and stream them somewhere, or have them on TPB, but you need to keep the torrents alive.
And in the end, unless you want to risk losing them, external hard drive is the absolute safest bet.

[jenkins4president]

Yes but I was have to spend hundreds upon hundreds of dollars on storage drives to store all my future movies.