Cord Cutters

[Covert Rain]

I am currently the better part of two years in to ripping my entire dvd/bluray collection to disk drives. Likewise, I use (mostly) MakeMKV, with Handbrake just for the occasional disc that MakeMKV won't rip for whatever reason.

My collection is about 4500 titles, but that includes more than 200 TV series that would be much more voluminous than single disc movies. I am still not certain if I will rip all of those - that would be another massive undertaking that I will decide about when I finish all the movies.

But due to the sheer size of my collection, I have opted not to do any kind of RAID arrangement. Instead, I do the initial rip to dedicated external HDs, and then copy those to internal HDs in my server/enclosure - so I do have duplicate copies at all times. I feel fairly confident that it's unlikely both copies would ever fail before I could replicate them, but at some point, I may make a third backup just to be on the extra safe side.

I'm guessing it will be another two years or so to finish the movie server project, and then possibly an additional year if I elect to rip all the TV series. I don't work on it every day, and sometimes take weeks off between dedicated efforts, but I feel like I am mostly making good progress.

I went back and forth on whether to use JBOD or Raid 5. NAS drives are ridiculous. However, I decided on Raid 5. I might regret it. However, I also have a brand new full tower PC on top of my NAS server. I am going to do a full backup on regular high capacity HD (not NAS) so if something happens I have a full restore. I want my back up on a different device (that's the IT guy in me).

I am not using handbrake because MakeMKV provides me the lossless copies and to date have not had a single disc fail to rip yet. Still have a ton of backing up to do. I am currently only in the "C's" in my collection and started around Late December.

I have nowhere near 4500 titles any longer. I used to have close to 3000 but that included my vast VHS library which I gave to my late father and basically started over rebuilding one DVD, BluRay and now 4K disc at a time. If I had a collection as big as yours definitly would have used JBOD.

 

[Devilmaycare]

I am currently the better part of two years in to ripping my entire dvd/bluray collection to disk drives. Likewise, I use (mostly) MakeMKV, with Handbrake just for the occasional disc that MakeMKV won't rip for whatever reason.

My collection is about 4500 titles, but that includes more than 200 TV series that would be much more voluminous than single disc movies. I am still not certain if I will rip all of those - that would be another massive undertaking that I will decide about when I finish all the movies.

But due to the sheer size of my collection, I have opted not to do any kind of RAID arrangement. Instead, I do the initial rip to dedicated external HDs, and then copy those to internal HDs in my server/enclosure - so I do have duplicate copies at all times. I feel fairly confident that it's unlikely both copies would ever fail before I could replicate them, but at some point, I may make a third backup just to be on the extra safe side.

I'm guessing it will be another two years or so to finish the movie server project, and then possibly an additional year if I elect to rip all the TV series. I don't work on it every day, and sometimes take weeks off between dedicated efforts, but I feel like I am mostly making good progress.

Using a RAID is really nice in case of a disk failure. You don't have any real downtime with it. I use SHR2 for it which is Synology's raid version that allows for mixed disks, fault tolerance, hot swapping, etc.

The "2" is for duel disk redundancy. I have an 8-bay nas so it allows for up to two drives to die at once. I do that because if one drive dies the unit has do do a raid rebuild for the replacement drive. That taxes the other drives and it's most likely when a 2nd drive might fail. I like having that extra piece of mind.

It handles my library really well too. Currently at about 14k titles in it (I've been building it since 2009). A lot of that is TV shows. All of the old Simpsons, Doctor Who, South Park, SG1, etc. TV shows with 200+ episodes gets the count up quick.

For TV shows, I'd say rip any of them that you watch regularly. Like I use the old Doctor Who and Stargate episodes as background watching and watch them a lot. It made sense to have those ripped too.

 

[dreamcastrocks]

Man, and I thought my 1500 titles or so was impressive. I stopped collecting over 10 years ago it seems, but some of your collections are indeed impressive.

 

[Raindog]

Using a RAID is really nice in case of a disk failure. You don't have any real downtime with it. I use SHR2 for it which is Synology's raid version that allows for mixed disks, fault tolerance, hot swapping, etc.

The "2" is for duel disk redundancy. I have an 8-bay nas so it allows for up to two drives to die at once. I do that because if one drive dies the unit has do do a raid rebuild for the replacement drive. That taxes the other drives and it's most likely when a 2nd drive might fail. I like having that extra piece of mind.

It handles my library really well too. Currently at about 14k titles in it (I've been building it since 2009). A lot of that is TV shows. All of the old Simpsons, Doctor Who, South Park, SG1, etc. TV shows with 200+ episodes gets the count up quick.

For TV shows, I'd say rip any of them that you watch regularly. Like I use the old Doctor Who and Stargate episodes as background watching and watch them a lot. It made sense to have those ripped too.

Sounds good. But since you are using a RAID setup in an 8 bay enclosure, that means you only can really use 4 disks for pure storage. How big are the drives that you are using that you are able to fit 14K movies and TV episodes on them?

Due to both expense and failure risk, I have been keeping my individual HD usage to 10 TB drives. I am figuring about four to five drives eventually for all the movies, and maybe another one to two 10 TB drives for TV shows (if I elect to do those) and any other assorted media I want to add.

My collection is quite a bit smaller than yours, and I can't imagine fitting it on just four drives, unless you are using enormous capacity drives.

 

[Devilmaycare]

Sounds good. But since you are using a RAID setup in an 8 bay enclosure, that means you only can really use 4 disks for pure storage. How big are the drives that you are using that you are able to fit 14K movies and TV episodes on them?

Due to both expense and failure risk, I have been keeping my individual HD usage to 10 TB drives. I am figuring about four to five drives eventually for all the movies, and maybe another one to two 10 TB drives for TV shows (if I elect to do those) and any other assorted media I want to add.

My collection is quite a bit smaller than yours, and I can't imagine fitting it on just four drives, unless you are using enormous capacity drives.

With SHR2 6 of the 8 disks are usable. 2 are used for protection. Currently in mine I have 4-4TB drives and 4-8TB drives. It gives about 29 TB of usable space with 14.5 TB used for protection. I've been slowly upgrading the 4s to 8s when space runs low. I have about 8 TB free right now after I upgraded 2 of the drives in the fall.

Some of my older shows don't take up a ton of space either. Like the early seasons of Simpons and South Park were from their DVDs and are standard def. Those old cartoon scale up decently since they're so basic and they also compress nicely compared to live action. I think some of those seasons are under a gig in size for the entire season. It's not like ripping Oppenheimer in 4k with DV.

 

[Covert Rain]

The irony in this is I am already looking to expand (I have 4 bay with 4x4TB NAS drives). Technically I have 88TB capacity with those 4 bays. However, even when I priced out swapping for 4X8TB drives, which I can hot swap, it was actually cheaper to buy a 4 bay expansion that comes with another 4X4TB NAS drives) which will give me what I need for the foreseeable future. Then if I really want to expand I could pony up to start putting all 8TB or 12TB drives in. I don't see myself ever buying 22TB NAS drives unless prices drastically change.

 

[Raindog]

I am not using handbrake because MakeMKV provides me the lossless copies and to date have not had a single disc fail to rip yet. Still have a ton of backing up to do. I am currently only in the "C's" in my collection and started around Late December.

One of the challenging but also positive things about this project is that it's allowing me to locate any discs that have gone "bad" over the years. So far, after ripping almost 1500 or so discs, I have discovered about a dozen that were dead discs and wouldn't rip or play, all of which I was able to rebuy and replace. Luckily, nothing so far has been an OOP or impossible to replace title.

But with about two-thirds of my collection still to go, I fully expect to find more duds in there, possibly not an insignificant number. For example, there are runs of Warner Brothers manufactured DVDs from the late 2000s that have been notorious for defects, and I have probably dozens of titles that have been identified as being likely susceptible to that. I won't know for certain until I get to actually trying to rip them, but I expect there will be some. I feel like I've been pretty lucky so far with so relatively few dead discs.

 

[Covert Rain]

One of the challenging but also positive things about this project is that it's allowing me to locate any discs that have gone "bad" over the years. So far, after ripping almost 1500 or so discs, I have discovered about a dozen that were dead discs and wouldn't rip or play, all of which I was able to rebuy and replace. Luckily, nothing so far has been an OOP or impossible to replace title.

But with about two-thirds of my collection still to go, I fully expect to find more duds in there, possibly not an insignificant number. For example, there are runs of Warner Brothers manufactured DVDs from the late 2000s that have been notorious for defects, and I have probably dozens of titles that have been identified as being likely susceptible to that. I won't know for certain until I get to actually trying to rip them, but I expect there will be some. I feel like I've been pretty lucky so far with so relatively few dead discs.

I said above I had no problem ripping discs but then remembered yes I did. One. One of the first discs I tried to backup was James Bond Spectre. Discs looks pristine. Didn't work. Bought the 4K version and no issues.

 

[Raindog]

I said above I had no problem ripping discs but then remembered yes I did. One. One of the first discs I tried to backup was James Bond Spectre. Discs looks pristine. Didn't work. Bought the 4K version and no issues.

Yeah, many of the duds I've had show no visible signs of defects. Only a few have shown discoloration or some other visible flaw where you at least immediately understand why they are gone.

 

[Covert Rain]

Yeah, many of the duds I've had show no visible signs of defects. Only a few have shown discoloration or some other visible flaw where you at least immediately understand why they are gone.

My 4 bay expansion bay arrived. My 4x4TB drives get here in a couple days. Have not done this yet but as I understand it, I cannot expand my volume/storage pool those 4 drives. It has to be a separate volume/storage pool. However, Plex allows you to point to multiple libraries and it will still show up as one library.

 

[Ronin]

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[gimpy]

Anybody have a guess at the price?

 

[puckhead]

Anybody have a guess at the price?

I'll guess 20-30/month to start.

 

[dreamcastrocks]

My guess is 19.99 with commercials and 24-26.99 without.

 

[Dan H]

My 4 bay expansion bay arrived. My 4x4TB drives get here in a couple days. Have not done this yet but as I understand it, I cannot expand my volume/storage pool those 4 drives. It has to be a separate volume/storage pool. However, Plex allows you to point to multiple libraries and it will still show up as one library.

Are you running TrueNAS? That’s expected.

You can create a new VDEV with the additional drives, then add that VDEV to your overall pool.

 

[Devilmaycare]

Are you running TrueNAS? That’s expected.

You can create a new VDEV with the additional drives, then add that VDEV to your overall pool.

He's using a QNAP. The expansion bays don't go into the main pool, they have their own pool. Synology ones work similarly. Since the unit plugs into the main one they don't combine the pool in case of the expansion being unplugged (either power or data) since it would kill the main pool.

 

[Covert Rain]

I have it all setup now. It's actually pretty seamless with the separate ones. I am chewing up space pretty quickly not compressing but I knew that going in. Adding multiple libraries via different locations was really simple in Plex.

 

[Dan H]

He's using a QNAP. The expansion bays don't go into the main pool, they have their own pool. Synology ones work similarly. Since the unit plugs into the main one they don't combine the pool in case of the expansion being unplugged (either power or data) since it would kill the main pool.

Ah, okay. I decided to roll my own. Easier to do it one piece at a time.

 

[Covert Rain]

Ah, okay. I decided to roll my own. Easier to do it one piece at a time.

Yeah, I am just getting started because Plex is a main driver. My physical collection is out of control and it's time to digitize. Plus, physical media is going to be niche. Even Plex is about to drop a new UI along with a Digital store for renting and purchase new movies/TV shows.

 

[Devilmaycare]

Yeah, I am just getting started because Plex is a main driver. My physical collection is out of control and it's time to digitize. Plus, physical media is going to be niche. Even Plex is about to drop a new UI along with a Digital store for renting and purchase new movies/TV shows.

And that is why I use Emby/Jellyfin over Plex. I hate that they keep adding that type of bloat to it. I want my media server to only index and catalogue my libraries and not try to do everything. I can easily rent from Apple or Amazon if I want to and don't need to see it in with my collection.

 

[Covert Rain]

And that is why I use Emby/Jellyfin over Plex. I hate that they keep adding that type of bloat to it. I want my media server to only index and catalogue my libraries and not try to do everything. I can easily rent from Apple or Amazon if I want to and don't need to see it in with my collection.

Rentals no. However, I do think it's a matter of time before all sales (minus niche buyers) won't have any choice but to buy movies digitally. I think Plex is planning for that future. Not that I want that day to come but it is.

 

[Dan H]

And that is why I use Emby/Jellyfin over Plex. I hate that they keep adding that type of bloat to it. I want my media server to only index and catalogue my libraries and not try to do everything. I can easily rent from Apple or Amazon if I want to and don't need to see it in with my collection.

Hmm. I may have to cut over if that’s the case. I’ll have to spin up an instance in a container and see how I like it.

 

[Devilmaycare]

Hmm. I may have to cut over if that’s the case. I’ll have to spin up an instance in a container and see how I like it.

I've been running Emby for years. I've been thinking of firing up a Jellyfin instance to try it out now too. It's basically a fork of Emby. I was looking to do that mainly because there's a guy working on a custom Jellyfin client for Zidoo boxes. I use a Z9X as my local streaming box.

 

[Folster]

My guess is 19.99 with commercials and 24-26.99 without.

It's going to be for live sports content. A commercial free option is not possible. Basically cable with just the sports channels.

 

[dreamcastrocks]

It's going to be for live sports content. A commercial free option is not possible. Basically cable with just the sports channels.

They talked about getting it in a bundle with Disney, Hulu etc. That is the price that I am referring to, with it all in a bundle.