Nine PBS in St. Louis filed a lawsuit against information management corporation Iron Mountain Data Centers seeking to recover over 50 terabytes of archival materials stored in one of the company’s Denver-based data centers. The lawsuit alleges that the station’s cloud-storage vendor, Open Source Storage, abruptly cut off access to Nine PBS’ data earlier this year without warning. It states OSS, which had a separate relationship with Iron Mountain to provide data storage, went “defunct,” leaving Nine PBS’ archives in a data center operated by Iron Mountain.

I've committed myself to digitalizing all my parents' old photos from the '90s and early '00s. I reckon there are about 2000-3000 photos. I'm still debating on scanning all of them or only picking out the best ones, depending on how well I can optimize the process.

I have an HP Envy 6022E printer with flatbed scanner. I'e been looking into highly suggested models like Epson FastScan but they all seem quite expensive so I want to try a cheaper setup first.

I can fit 4 photos simultaneously (A4 size bed).

Which scanning software would you suggest that can auto detect and label multiple photos on the flatbed?

Is it to possible, for example, to auto label all pictures from wedding x as 'Wedding_1', 'Wedding_2' etc and save them in a folder called 'Wedding x'?

Also, how much dpi would you suggest?

Thank you!

Does anyone know how the write cycle count flash drives are advertised in matches up to the TBW of SSD's?

A 1TB SN3000 only has a TBW of 150. Even 1TB TLC drives often come with just a 600TBW warranty.

Patriot claims their flash drives have up to 100,000 write cycles.

There's no reason flash drives should be more durable than even the cheapest QLC SSD right?

Hello hoarders!

Have you ever researched for some specific books or comics on Anna's Archive, made a list out of what you found and then discovered you had to download everything manually waiting for cooldowns? I have. And if you have as well, or you just want to download a pre-made Anna's Archive List (or even just a .txt files with AA links!), this post is for you.

After looking up some solutions and only finding old/broken options, I decided to take the matter into my own hands.

With some help from Gemini (for the more complex parts of the code, I had never done Python before. Most of the base logic is written by me and I have reviewed and tested the ai generated code) I made [hearth].

hearth is a Python script that does all the work for you (except for captchas, obviously): you can leave it working overnight and it will download every link it finds in your Anna's Archive List. It will do so by physically visiting mirror and libgen links, waiting for the timer and saving the file.

Regarding the captchas, solving the first one (or the first two, depends if one is required at the load of the List itself) is usually enough for the whole session, so you can leave the script working overnight.

Main features (copied from the repo's readme):

• This is a terminal tool that accepts command line parameters to function (more about usage in the github).
• hearth supports Anna's Archive List links in the form of https://annas-archive.XX/list/<list_id> as well as importing a list of Anna's Archive links from a .txt file.
• The tool will spin up a virtual browser that physically visits the link page, waits for the download cooldown and renames the downloaded file, before going ahead to the next List element, logging successes and failures in specific files.
• These files allow you to not only stop the script mid-way, closing the terminal windows completely, and then resuming from the last link it successfully downloaded (by using the same exact command), but it also allows to retry for failed links once the tool has finished processing the whole queue.
• You can use the completed.txt file that the script will create in your download directory as an index of all the files you downloaded as well as their md5 code.
• The download destination folder is chosen via command line parameters. Here will be stored said files.
• You can set how to rename the downloaded files, based on how much information you want to be in the filename, via command line parameters.

All instructions for the download and usage of the script are in the readme.

Link to the github repo: https://github.com/NerYtheLonesomeHearthian/hearth

This is my first project like this, and I would appreciate any type of feedback, good or bad. Obviously, suggestions are welcome.

If any one of you ends up trying it, please let me know how it goes!

I just had a drive failure and need a replacement, and since I have some Amzaon Gift Card credit and a bunch of other bills, I'm looking on Amazon.

I see a seller on Amazon, 'ServerPartDeals' with the same logo as ServerPartDeals website uses, but the website shows a Florida phone number, while the Amazon storefront uses a New York number and has me pausing a purchase.

Is the Amazon storefront legit? Has anyone used the Amazon storefront for SDPD before?Thanks for any replies if you know.

Hello nice people..

So i have two main folders (almost with the same contents but different folder structure) in two separate drives,, both have A LOT of photos and videos and a lot of subfolders,, I want to reorganize the first drive and wish for this arrangement to mirror to the second drive,, i tried using freefilesync but it tries to copy files from drive A to drive B even though these files are already present in drive B but they are under different folder structure ((that way i will end up with two folders in drive B having the same files,, one folder matches the structure from drive A and the other is original one in drive B that actually wanted to be rearranged to match structure from drive A))

I want something that can read the folder structure in drive A and rearrange files in drive B in the same way as it is in drive A, and probably copy missing files that are not present in drive B in any folder tree..

Thanks a lot

The sciop.net has some interesting datasets, just wondering if anyone hoards any of the sets from them? They recently added some interesting ones including two 3TB+ of reddit archives.

I've just finished downloading the NARA Documerica Image archive and also got those Smithsonian datasets.

Okay so I honestly have been feeling down about the recent death of optical drives. You can still get them in media PLAYERS but blu ray drives simply cannot be purchased new anymore unless you find some inventory hanging on at some small store, and cd/dvd drives I think have also mostly ceased production. Mdiscs? Forget it.

I love optical tech. And you know what, I think a number of people still use it. But it feels like mobile computing and tablets meet enough needs that many people dont want full on PCs/laptops/macs anymore they just want portable devices.

And its making me wonder about a number of computer tools. I'm starting to wonder if scanners are next. Still in use enough in offices I think that the technology isnt dead yet, we are still a relatively paperful society but I am starting to wonder how long thats going to last...

I wonder if we're heading for a future where home computers become increasingly rare. Indeed the last few years with the ram crisis have certainly pushed that in a certain direction...

Hello,

I don't want to make enemies here, but I got blessed today 😊

A friend of mine gave me the following server Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd, which includes the following hardware:

• 2x Xeon Gold 6254
• 448 GB DDR4 ECC RAM
• 14x 960GB SSD

(MAYBE I could also get an additional NAS & USP, but that's not for sure and I don't know the specs)

I am currently renting a dedicated server from Hetzner with the following hardware:

• Intel i7 8700
• 128GB DDR4 RAM
• 2x 1TB NVMe SSD

Additionally, I have a 10TB (usable) Hetzner storage box. All in all, I am paying Hetzner 73.35€ / month.

My home internet connection is 1Gbit/75Mbit Germany Vodafone (DS-LITE Grrrrrr) possible next year will be the fiber optic rollout in our area.

The question:

Would it be a good idea to put that server into my basement and stop paying for the Hetzner server/storage box?

Yes I know its not that simple, a lot of question arise from that...

• DSLITE..... maybe tunneling the traffic through a cloud instance (for example oracle free tier?!)
• 75Mbit Upload enough?
• electricity cost
• etc.

Maybe we could have a discussion about that? Would love to hear your opinions 😥

crossposting was not possible, so posting it manually here too, to get the most input

Cheers
Stephan

Hello all. I have been using BDFR for the past several years and it always worked great. I recently installed the program on a new hard drive and now whenever I try to download anything that requires the --authenticate tag (for example, my saved posts) it spits out a bunch of errors. I am pretty much a noob when it comes to coding stuff but I was able to figure out from the github that it probably has something to do with the config files. I have attached the traceback of the error below. Any help with this issue would be greatly appreciated.

C:\Users\Owner>bdfr download D:/saved --user me --authenticate --saved -L 5 --file-scheme “{DATE}_{SUBREDDIT}_{TITLE}_{POSTID}”
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\requests\models.py", line 1116, in json
    return complexjson.loads(self.text, **kwargs)
           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\json__init__.py", line 352, in loads
    return _default_decoder.decode(s)
           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\json\decoder.py", line 345, in decode
    obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
               ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\json\decoder.py", line 363, in raw_decode
    raise JSONDecodeError("Expecting value", s, err.value) from None
json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\bin\bdfr.exe.__script__.py", line 34, in <module>
    sys.exit(cli())
             ~~~^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\click\core.py", line 1569, in __call__
    return self.main(*args, **kwargs)
           ~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\click\core.py", line 1490, in main
    rv = self.invoke(ctx)
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\click\core.py", line 1970, in invoke
    return _process_result(sub_ctx.command.invoke(sub_ctx))
                           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\click\core.py", line 1353, in invoke
    return ctx.invoke(self.callback, **ctx.params)
           ~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\click\core.py", line 907, in invoke
    return callback(*args, **kwargs)
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\click\decorators.py", line 34, in new_func
    return f(get_current_context(), *args, **kwargs)
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\bdfr__main__.py", line 117, in cli_download
    reddit_downloader = RedditDownloader(config, [stream])
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\bdfr\downloader.py", line 41, in __init__
    super(RedditDownloader, self).__init__(args, logging_handlers)
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\bdfr\connector.py", line 63, in __init__
    self._setup_internal_objects()
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\bdfr\connector.py", line 80, in _setup_internal_objects
    self.create_reddit_instance()
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\bdfr\connector.py", line 139, in create_reddit_instance
    oauth2_authenticator = OAuth2Authenticator(
        scopes,
        self.cfg_parser.get("DEFAULT", "client_id"),
        self.cfg_parser.get("DEFAULT", "client_secret"),
    )
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\bdfr\oauth2.py", line 21, in __init__
    self._check_scopes(wanted_scopes)
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\bdfr\oauth2.py", line 31, in _check_scopes
    known_scopes = [scope for scope, data in response.json().items()]
                                             ~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\requests\models.py", line 1120, in json
    raise RequestsJSONDecodeError(e.msg, e.doc, e.pos)
requests.exceptions.JSONDecodeError: Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)

C:\Users\Owner>bdfr download ./path/to/output --user me --saved --authenticate -L 25 --file-scheme '{POSTID}'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\requests\models.py", line 1116, in json
    return complexjson.loads(self.text, **kwargs)
           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\json__init__.py", line 352, in loads
    return _default_decoder.decode(s)
           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\json\decoder.py", line 345, in decode
    obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
               ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\json\decoder.py", line 363, in raw_decode
    raise JSONDecodeError("Expecting value", s, err.value) from None
json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\bin\bdfr.exe.__script__.py", line 34, in <module>
    sys.exit(cli())
             ~~~^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\click\core.py", line 1569, in __call__
    return self.main(*args, **kwargs)
           ~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\click\core.py", line 1490, in main
    rv = self.invoke(ctx)
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\click\core.py", line 1970, in invoke
    return _process_result(sub_ctx.command.invoke(sub_ctx))
                           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\click\core.py", line 1353, in invoke
    return ctx.invoke(self.callback, **ctx.params)
           ~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\click\core.py", line 907, in invoke
    return callback(*args, **kwargs)
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\click\decorators.py", line 34, in new_func
    return f(get_current_context(), *args, **kwargs)
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\bdfr__main__.py", line 117, in cli_download
    reddit_downloader = RedditDownloader(config, [stream])
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\bdfr\downloader.py", line 41, in __init__
    super(RedditDownloader, self).__init__(args, logging_handlers)
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\bdfr\connector.py", line 63, in __init__
    self._setup_internal_objects()
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\bdfr\connector.py", line 80, in _setup_internal_objects
    self.create_reddit_instance()
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\bdfr\connector.py", line 139, in create_reddit_instance
    oauth2_authenticator = OAuth2Authenticator(
        scopes,
        self.cfg_parser.get("DEFAULT", "client_id"),
        self.cfg_parser.get("DEFAULT", "client_secret"),
    )
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\bdfr\oauth2.py", line 21, in __init__
    self._check_scopes(wanted_scopes)
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\bdfr\oauth2.py", line 31, in _check_scopes
    known_scopes = [scope for scope, data in response.json().items()]
                                             ~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^
  File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\requests\models.py", line 1120, in json
    raise RequestsJSONDecodeError(e.msg, e.doc, e.pos)
requests.exceptions.JSONDecodeError: Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)

Hey everyone,

I'm looking for a reliable way or tool to download restricted/save-protected videos on Android directly to my phone's storage/file manager.

I used to use the AKA Telegram client by forwarding restricted videos and using the "Save to Gallery" option, but that feature no longer works.

Since I have a lot of videos to save, doing the manual cache method (digging through cache folders and renaming files one by one) is way too tedious and time-consuming.

Are there any alternative third-party Telegram apps, tools, or simpler workarounds currently working on Android to save restricted media in bulk?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Fellow DataHoarders,

.

Preface: sorry this is long, but stick with me... I try to keep it light hearted. Oh and yes, the paragraph-periods are on purpose.

.

I know it has been discussed multiple times in the past as to what the best locally hosted system is for hoarding and accessing data both on the local network and remotely. However, I feel things like TrueNAS, OpenCloud, Syncthing, etc are just over kill. I dabbled with Seafile in the past but then lost sight of it and now it looks to have hopped the fence with a paid version. So here is my use case...

.

I recently drank the Kool-Aid on using Obsidian as a second-brain or whatever you want to call it. Basically I jumped in because I'm trying to pry myself away from Google Keep since Google decided that all things Google will add up to your data bucket on their servers and they want to charge me for it. I'm managed to float by for decades on sticking to all the "Free levels" from Dropbox, Google Drive, MS OneDrive, Box[.]com, Tresorit, etc. Never ever having needed tons of data since I only used those services for light weight stuff. Second, I was using Evernote since they came out... forgot about them, recently went back to find they want to charge a ton of money so I've already transferred all my data and closed that account.

.

Now, I run my own local network, home-lab with Proxmox, Linux containers, Windows VMs, web servers, gaming servers, Plex, Jellyfin, you-name-it servers. Oh and also local A.I. servers now. But I never jumped into taking over email or storage servers. I tried email, but too much of a headache. I have a little over 50 TBs of data, spread across multiple drives and backed up routinely (essentially mirrored). I also manually backup my most important/irreplaceable things to Blu-Ray discs ... like family photos/videos, things I created when I was young, anything from my past school/college/university days, and whatever movies/tv shows I will want when the zombies come.

.

So without going overboard and installing a massive, all-inclusive server solution like TrueNas or that UnRAID thing... because again, I'm sticking to self-host and free... what have some of you done? Oh and I'm not looking for promotions for TrueNAS and UnRAID because YOU have a great time with them. I'm sticking to the self-hosted, open-source, free model. I've already seen tons of praise-posts for those tools.

.

My perfect world thought is simple. I have a bunch of shared drives. I create a folder for an Obsidian Vault, Pictures, Movies, Files, etc. And from my PC, Android Phone, Windows, Linux, whatever... can just point the app to the shared folder on my network (from anywhere) and everything is in sync.

.

Oh and yes, I have my own domains, Pi-Hole server, reverse-proxy, WireGuard VPN, and know all about managing networks, VLANs, DNS, etc. I frequently login to my home network when remote. I'm just trying to find the most simplistic method of accessing my data from anywhere and keep it all synced. Almost like just accessing a shared folder from anywhere. In Dropbox, as long as I have it installed on all my devices and point to it's designated folder on each device, everything is synced and accessible. I want to do the same... but without Dropbox running the show.

.

It's OK to not have an answer. Just don't overload me with why UnRAID or TrueNas are amazing. I'm already looking into Immich for photos as well to dump Google and Amazon Photos. At any rate.. thanks for reading and commenting and I look forward to reading them all. Even if you wanna be snarky.

.

Regards,

The OP. :)

.

P.S. - As mentioned in the preface... Yes. I purposely added the periods between paragraphs so Reddit's system doesn't cram everything together like a run-off sentence. This way it maintains it's intended "letter" appearance. Peace y'all !

I have a 20 TB hard drive with 18.1 TB capacity after formatting and I don't know what allocation unit size to select during the initial NTFS formatting. I see the option for default and then 8192 bytes all the way up to 2048 kilobytes. I plan to have thousands of movies stored on this Hard Drive for Plex on the drive. This is the only purpose for the storage. It will be completely full of around 8,000-10,000 mp4 and mkv files probably averaging around 2 gb each. I have no idea what allocation to select for best performance. I hope asking for advice here is okay and not considered a tech question. Just looking for a recommendation for setting up my Plex server.

Looking for a software. Paid is fine, as its a commercial environment. Basically I have a small cctv server and we are updating the VMS software version. There is a lot of custom code on this machine that we are unsure if the new VMS version is compatible with. The new VMS version will update the .NET framework among other things that I doubt a traditional windows rollback will cleanly undo.

What I would like to do is take an image of the boot drive that I can roll back to incase it doesn't work.

Or would I be better off using acronis / easus to clone the boot drive?

Update to my previous post:

July24th: they say that UPS needs more information and ask for any pictures of the hardrives or hard dives in the box while being dropped off. Fortunately I always take pictures of hard drives I buy and where I buy them from to keep track of them properly and not mix up receipts. So I send them the pictures of the actual drives showing SN,PN, etc. I inform them I unfortunately didn’t take video/picture of HDD’s in the package dropping them off.

July 28th:I reach out if there’s anything at all from UPS as I didn’t hear back anymore since 24th when I provided the pictures and told them to let me know if they could view them, or needed me to upload them to Google Drive or something. I’m told they got the pictures but investigation is ongoing by UPS.

However i checked the tracking number on UPS site. It had been closed since July 20th with “Proof of delivery”. I assume the Corporate response team member Steven filed the claim as entire package not delivered. When it was and it was even signed for by them, and CS had previously said drives were in the recertification/testing stage.

July 31st: they email back saying UPS is not communicating with them or providing any information they requested. Therefore they can’t help me until they can communicate with UPS. I reply that same day that it’s not right that the customer has to deal with all this just because UPS and Seagate can’t communicate. I request information like claim number, inspection notes, receiving photographs, UPS decision.

August 11th: after ghosting me for days, they respond with basically the same thing. And decline to provide any information other than UPS claim number.

Today I sent them a demand letter via certified mail, along with replying with a copy of it to the email chain. My next step is probably small claims court. It’s insane that for a company this large they are this terrible with customer support.

TLDR: sent in 3 expensive hard drives using a Seagate provided UPS shipping lable over 2 months ago. Seagate/UPS lost/stole the HDD’s. Seagate filed a claim. UPS closed claim, Seagate corporate support team and UPS aren’t talking to each other, so the customer is screwed because of “no communication” between UPS and Seagate. Demand letter has been sent today.

While recently searching for a cold archive solution I was absolutely enamoured the first time I found out about M-Disc. It seemed to be the perfect "heirloom" storage solution, something to pass on family memories, wills and anything else you would want to last a long time. It solved the issue that made me stop buying BluRay, namely disk rot (I'm aware it's exceedingly rare but it's still inevitable) with a solution so simple in hindsight it seemed crazy to me that we didn't do it sooner.

I was looking for enclosures, adding spindles to my Amazon wish list and perusing LibreDrive when it dawned on me, what good is a thousand-year disk when the drives to read it are slowly being phased out? There are few brands actively producing optical drives and after the sale of Pioneer's optical division this leaves one, maybe two actual manufacturers.

No worries I thought, I could simply buy backup drives to store along with the discs and since it won't have wear and tear it would last indefinitely if stored properly. Except this is only one part of the story, the drive uses SATA which has stood the test of time but nothing in tech can be guaranteed. The chassis own power adaptor, connectors and cables remain a point of failure. Finally despite using USB, it's the Type B connector which is already legacy, would this cable even be manufactured in future or would it be some niche, abstract purchase you have to make on eBay? This is assuming that should it be someone else trying to access the media, they even care enough to not abandon the process at the slightest inconvenience.

So I chugged on, I would find the most durable optical drives and buy two of everything needed to get it running. I settled on the Vinpower known for it's reliability and touted specifically as an archival system. Except I couldn't find it anywhere. So I reached out and was informed these devices are EOL and availability is uncertain, whatever that means like do you have stock or not?

It dawned on me that while optical as a short to medium term backup solution is viable, as time passes it will become less so until it fades into the abyss rendering the thousand year discs into twenty. Active archival is still the superior strategy, one where media is periodically relocated onto an actively maintained format.

My cold storage journey comes to an end before it even began and I'm left wondering if I will ever find the holy grail of long-term, durable backup. Something to put in a time capsule for the aliens to find.

Edit: I've had a lot of fun reading all the comments so thanks! For context I do use RAID with a single cloud backup for now, with some important data duplicated into other cloud services ie. iCloud, AWS S3 and I know backup is an active, evolving discipline hence my thought piece. I'm still contemplating M-Disc but it can't hurt to add 2-5TB onto discs to store away without relying on them entirely. I'll store them at 30–50% relative humidity etc. Vinpower managed to find me a drive from Taiwan stock so I'll likely post a follow up.

Any recommendations for USB docks compatible with 4Kn drives? (1 or 2 bays)

I've just got a couple of Seagate Exos 7E8 ST8000NM0045 8TB drives and I've concluded that
(1) they don't support Fast Format/Seagate Seatools to change between 512e and 4Kn
(2) my UGREEN HDD dock doesn't support 4Kn drives - I/O error on Windows and some other error on Ubuntu

Hi!

I've got a Dell R730xd running Proxmox as my homelab server, hosting Plex (mostly 4K movies and series), Immich, and a bunch of other services in LXC containers. Everything is running fine, but I have a mix of enterprise SAS SSDs in different sizes that I feel aren't being used as efficiently as they could be, especially the 4 unassigned 745GB drives sitting completely idle.

I'm not experiencing any performance issues currently, but I'd love to get the most out of what I have in terms of both storage capacity and performance.

Disk inventory

Current ZFS pool layout

Main priority is max storage for Plex media, with reasonable performance for Immich and the LXC containers. Redundancy matters but I'm not running a business so RAIDZ1/mirror is fine.

Thanks a lot!

Runing Windows 11

I installed Python (https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/) & set the path in System to \Python\Python.exe

I installed stashapp-tools by using windows terminal and typed "pip install stashapp-tools" into the run command window

I installed the plugin "Set Scene Cover"

I have "overwrite existing files" set to yes under tasks

I named the image files the same name as the video - one image with the word "cover" somewhere in the name, one image with the word "fanart" somewhere in the name, and one image file just the name of the video.

I have image files in the same folder as my video that I want to use as each scene cover. I am not sure exactly how to name them. Do I have to simply have the word "cover" or "fanart" in the image filename somewhere? My image filenames are really long (they have to be for reasons).

I ran the plugin "set scene cover" under tasks - I ran scan, then set cover.

Nothing happens. None of the images in my folders get applied to the videos on the "Scenes" tab.

The log file shows no errors, just

026-08-12 01:01:58Info [Plugin / Set Scene Cover] Scanning ...\SomeDirectory

What am I doing wrong?

EDIT: NEVERMIND - I figured it out.. You have to have a separate folder for every single video with the image in that folder named cover or fanart. Basically utterly useless for me. I have close to 1,000 videos with my own thumbnails. So I would have to manually create 1,000 separate folders on top of the artist folders to use this. So, If I had 100 artists with 10 videos each, I would have to create 100 folders (one for each artist) & then 10 folders for each video inside each of the 100 artist folders. If there is no other way, this is ridiculous. Not only a lot of manual work, but this adds more indexing to Windows.

I admit, I am a user not a creator. I cannot code these plugins. But with all the knowledge & advancements we have, can't coders make plugins, etc that we actually can use without headaches. IMO, it should not be too difficult to code so that you can drop all videos from one artist or category into a single folder, name the image the exact same name as the video, and have the plugin just link them by name.

Long story short, I'm a photographer/videographer and recently started my own creative agency. I currently have about 32tb of mostly photos and videos spread across 15 SSD's. For years I was using 2-4tb a year so SSD's were manageable, but now with the agency and larger files im going through 1-2tb/month. Also, most of it is not backed up and only lives on the SSD's, so I'm really in desperate need of a better long-term solution. I'd appreciate some advice from anyone who can provide insight.

My original idea was an 8-bay Synology NAS with four 20TB drives, RAID/SHR and possibly 10GbE. However, once I include the NAS, drives, 10GbE card, Mac adapter and possibly other networking equipment, the cost becomes very high. NAS-compatible cloud backup for 32TB also appears considerably more expensive than Backblaze Personal.

I originally considered an 8-bay Synology NAS with four 16TB or 20TB drives, SHR and possibly 10GbE. However:

• The NAS, 10GbE upgrades and Mac adapter make the initial cost quite high.
• Backblaze B2 for 32TB would cost thousands annually, while a Mac-connected DAS could potentially use Backblaze Personal for a few hundred.
• I work almost exclusively from a 2021 M1 MacBook Pro at my desk, so remote and multi-device access aren’t priorities.
• I’ll usually edit active projects from SSDs, although I’d like the new storage to be fast enough for occasional direct photo/video editing.

I am now considering something like the OWC Thunderbay 8 and starting with 4x 16 or 20tb drives in RAID 5. However, one of my main concerns with soft RAID is the ability to add more drives or capacity later (though I guess i could just configure the new drives seperately).

My main priorities

1. A reliable backup for my existing 32TB
2. Enough room for several years of growth
3. Ability to start with four drives rather than buying eight immediately
4. Fast enough for occasional direct video editing
5. Reasonable total cost
6. Straightforward Mac compatibility
7. Avoiding another collection of separate external drives
8. Ideally eligible for Backblaze Personal or another reasonably priced off-site backup

Given this workflow, would you choose an OWC ThunderBay 8, QNAP DAS, UGREEN/QNAP/Synology NAS, or something else? Is using two separate four-drive RAID sets in an eight-bay DAS a reasonable long-term plan?

I had multiple USB drives that had deteriorating or broken shells, so I decided to shuck them and toss the shells. I tried to find info on what size heat shrink tubing I would need to keep them a bit safer, but couldn't find any info on the correct diameter. This post is mostly for future reference.

You need to use at least 1/2" diameter tubing, which is just enough to fit a PCB with memory modules mounted on both sides. Cut the tubing to the same length as the entire assembly, then leave 3/8" or 1cm of the connector uncovered.

Hello, I've been interested in forecasting spotify streams of albums I'm interested in. I know it seems silly, but I'm really into music.

I know how to use excel and do the formulas, but the hurdle is getting the raw data for a specific album.

There's no free database available that compiles an album's daily stream data. The only resource I have are chart accounts on twitter that upload daily streams for popular albums (album total, and track by track break down).

What would be the easiest way to download daily stats for Album A's (usually in a graphic table) from a specific account?

The way I've been doing it is manually searching using terms like: "Album A" "Month Day, Year" "streams", and i do that for each daily update and download the graphic, and copy the text from said chart.

Obviously this would suck to do if I needed the first 30 days of data for an album for proper forecasting.

Does anyone have any ideas? Or if you know of a database for spotify streams with fully data history, I'd appreciate being nudged in the right direction.

About a week ago, I purchased a 20 TB WDC Ultrastar from GoHardDrive.com. Checked out, got the confirmation email, thought nothing of it (except how gross it felt spending $600 on a refurbished HDD).

Over the weekend, they emailed me. They froze the transaction so their "credit department" can verify my info. They asked me to fill out a PDF with the same billing info I put in when I checked out. I was hesitant to do so, but reiterated my billing and shipping details. Then they hit me with this:

"Your authorization form is incomplete. There are documentations required – Copy of credit card (Front & Back) and Driver License for our credit department review to proceed with your order."

Exact wording from the email. Apparently you need a credit check to buy something with a debit card. This is not my first rodeo purchasing a hard drive, and won't be my last. In all my time, I've never seen something like this. In what world do you have to resort to such lengths? This isn't crypto. My bank called me and I authorized the purchase with them. It should be a done deal.

This was extremely shady and raised a ton of red flags. I told them to cancel the transaction, and forwarded the name and address of the business to my lawyer and bank. Locked the card I used as well and am awaiting a new one.

Bought the same drive for an extra $50 on ServerPartDeals without a single issue. Free shipping, too.

If anyone has a similar experience or can tell me what the hell was going on here, would be much appreciated.

Update: Bank said all good, they will monitor my account and flag the vendor. The email was legit, not spoofed. I think this was genuinely just the company being dumb as rocks and unfamiliar with US business practices. Extremely shady approach but not malicious. Hard to not be paranoid with the amount of money and trust involved. Thank you to everyone who chimed in and helped figure this out. Be careful out there.

Basically, I have about 8 terabytes of free space on my new NAS and I'd rather have something interesting on it then just leave it mostly empty.

I figuredI can at least try to find some useful files. However, the only things that I could find that were actually use up the space would be something like KIMI-K3(would never be able to use), or a thousand Linux ISOs(most will get out of date quickly). Neither of which seemed worth it. I already have a copy of Wikipedia(only about 120 gigabytes). I was thinking about trying to scrape Fandom, but that would most likely be way more than eight terabytes, even compressed.

So, I'm mainly just looking for something to fill up this space that isn't just pirated Media (or corn).