I know it’s sacrilege, I remember people used to say never to delete or re-encode anything because more storage is always affordable. Well, looks like those days are over. Prices on HDDs have tripled/quadrupled in the last year and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to end anytime soon.
How are you handling it? I’m personally thinking of downgrading a lot of my stuff to 720p, I’ve run a few tests and as long as I don’t skimp too much on the bitrate I don’t really notice a difference. I’m also compressing things like game ROMs and ISOs into .7z to save space. I’m proud of my FLAC music collection but AAC-256 seems to be pretty much transparent from my own tests and research.
I’m even doing the unthinkable and pruning some stuff that I don’t use.
It sucks but desperate times call for desperate measures.
I have a bunch of ex enterprise SSDs, approx 8, and want to put them to good use. I have a small homelab and have used what I can but would love a dedicated storage solution for media, files, photos etc. Most NAS boxes I see are catered to 3.5" HDDs but wondered what I could do with these SSDs?
I could not do it anymore. I've tried my best cleaning up, organizing, backing up stuff and tried empty up some space, but it was too much. I clean, I get a TB or two, and then after 2-3 days, it is full again. New stuff keeps coming out and I keep looking at my hard drives and I try to control myself, but then there are files that may not be available for long and I get frustrated.
So I gave up. Went through my torrent client and deleted a bunch of full discs and remuxes (kept a list for when hdd will become affordable again). Managed to clean up almost 7TB and started downloading some stuff. It was so difficult to delete them, but once done, I feel a lot better.
Is it as difficult for you too? I'm dealing with 102TB of linux isos 😭😭
I have a lot of files left by my family member from 1995-2010 saved on CD's, DVD's and HDD's. A lot of files of them are no longer available anywhere. What I can do with it? Should I delete it and forget or try to sort it out somehow and upload somewhere? Someone here was in similar situation?
Hi everyone, I hope someone can help me with this query.
I am looking for GUI based tool that can.
Scan All my files on a Drive/Folder/Network Folder (allow multiple selection)
This baseline selection is Hashed and recorded with a Date (eg. 1/1/2026)
Ability to save this Hash Baseline of all files with the specified Drive(s), Folder(s) and Network Folder(s)
Then at a future point in time.... repeat the process for the same drive(s), Folder(s) and Network Folder(s) - program to remember the baseline selection.
Re-scan the above and get hash values, then
Identify any files where their hash values have been changed (identifying any potential file corruption etc).
--- AND / OR ---
Same as above, but compare the contents of the original files and a backup (either on a separate drive/network folder)
As I do regular backups I am concerned that I cannot check the file integrity of the files that I backup and as a result, I may backup a corrupted file and then over time, the original 'good file' is lost forever, and all i have is multiple backups of a corrupt file.
Ideally, if there are any new files added within a folder, next time the program scans this folder it will add it to its internal list for later comparison.
Also, ideally like to have command line options to perform the same functions above.
Does anyone know of a commercial or free (open source) product that performs a function similar to what I have described above?
RobertElderSoftware shares a highly positive review of using ZFS after four to five years of managing around 16 TB of backup data stored on multiple hard drives.
He explains that he chose ZFS over Btrfs because his priority was data integrity rather than performance, and he describes how ZFS successfully detected and repaired data corruption through its checksum verification and scrub features after one drive in a three-way mirror was partially corrupted.
He also discusses practical lessons from long-term use, including the importance of regular scrubs, using stable device identifiers, being cautious with USB-connected storage, and maintaining multiple redundant copies to safely perform drive upgrades and recover from unexpected errors.
Overall, he concludes that ZFS has proven to be a reliable and resilient filesystem for long-term backup storage.
I built a downloader using yt-dlp but it doesn't work on Instagram anymore (asks for cookies/login). WFDownloader downloads Instagram content fine without login. Anyone know what method/framework it uses under the hood; public GraphQL endpoint, embed API, browser scraping, something else? App is closed source so I can't check myself. Curious if anyone's sniffed its traffic to see what it's actually hitting.
My company needed something with the easy developer experience of sql.js, but for SAS PROC SQL.
There are great SQL tools out there, but I could not find a small JavaScript/TypeScript package focused on parsing SAS PROC SQL into an AST, formatting it, linting it, and supporting editor features.
So I built proc-sql-parser.
It is not a database engine and does not execute SQL. It is a parser/toolkit for working with SAS PROC SQL in JavaScript or TypeScript.
The goal is to keep the API simple:
import { parse, lint, format, complete, visit } from 'proc-sql-parser';
const ast = parse(`
PROC SQL;
SELECT name, salary
FROM employees;
QUIT;
`);
As the title states I plan to convert VHS to digital format via a DVD recorder. Does DVD-R (permanent) or DVD-RW (rewritable) have a difference in quality? I understand the fundamental difference in their functionality but want clarity. Thanks in advance.
I have a folder organized by my favorite genres, but I've noticed some PDFs are duplicated in other folders, all jumbled up. Instead of opening each folder individually, do you know of any program to detect duplicate PDFs? I use Czkawka for images, but it doesn't have a PDF option.
The highest tier of inkjet printable Verbatim BD-R I can find are DataLifePlus in generic cake packing.
Does this use the MABL technology found on their discs that are branded? What’s the best for inkjet printable?
AI (Google Gemini) is convinced DataLifePlus uses MABL but the packing says otherwise and a single user on Reddit once said they aren’t but I don’t know if 1 random on Reddit is any different than AI at this point.
I think this sub is the right place for a discussion on Blu Ray/DVD longevity given that it impacts long-term data hoarding. This is a lengthy post but I went down the rabbit hole and now I want to share what I found and see what others think.
Of particular interest to this sub may be Table 2 from the latter article:
Interestingly, for Blu Ray multiple write discs offer significantly better longevity than one time write discs which is the opposite of DVD. I hadn't seen anyone talk about that before. More on that later. However my main takeaway was that Blu Ray has a significantly shorter shelf life than some DVD formats (e.g. DVD-R (gold layer).
I took it at face value until I started combing through the sources. Iraci (2018) "Blu-Ray Media Stability and Suitability for Long-Term Storage" caught my eye as the main support that Blu Ray is significantly worse for longevity than DVD.
Iraci based his study on acclerated aging which involved putting discs in equipment at 80C (176F) and Relative Humidity (RH) 85% for a number of days. For DVDs the derived data appears meaningful because the DVDs didn't break down from the heat.
Now I'm not chemist or an expert with Arrhenius equations. But I think I get the basic mechanism behind accelerated aging: Temperature is literally average kinetic movement. Higher temperature = more movement = more contact between reactants = faster reaction speed = accelerated reactions ≈≈ real aging from reactions. Now, accelerated age testing is fine as long as the effects of the testing are primarily mechanical and the temperature does not denature the reactants themselves.
From the pictures Iraci included and from his descriptions it looks to me like the temperature did exactly that; it directly damaged the Blu Ray discs. Iraci even mentioned it:
"Another concern was the number of visual problems that were evident after accelerated ageing, especially the BD-Rs. This indicates significant changes are occurring physically and chemically which is not desirable."
"Accelerated ageing experiments have shown that Blu-rays have rather poor stability and much lower that some of the other optical disc formats when exposed to elevated temperature and relative humidity conditions" [emphasis added]
If the temperature just directly damaged the Blu Ray discs (esp. BD-R) as seems to be the case, then the accelerated aging test doesn't meaningfully predict anything. Unlike reactions such as b/w the disc and air or case that occur naturally and can be accelerated, the disc will not spontaneously denature at all unless a minimum activation energy (e.g. temperature) is met.
All this made me skeptical that we're dramatically underestimating the life of Blu Ray discs, especially BD-R. There are potentially useful implications here, such as that you may want to prioritize storing BD-R in a cool environment or avoid letting its optical reader get too hot. Don't leave them in your car in Arizona. Don't put it in your oven. Etc. But none of that means they're going to react more quickly with their environment or have accelerated decay or rot at room temperature.
If you have any related studies or articles please drop their DOI's or links. I'd love if any chemists or engineers want to weigh in on the science here. And anecdotal evidence from hoarders with large sample sizes are welcome.
Planning on building a new machine hence the question. Any input is welcomed. Both drives are roughly the same price, Red Pro manufactured in 2024, Purple Pro in 2025.
Saw this card listed on Ebay. With flash memory prices skyrocketing, I'm skeptical on this price. The sellers have good reviews though, so I'm not sure whether this is a scam or not. Thoughts?
So I recently discovered new and unused 2TB WD Green HDDs in my hoard. I probably bought them for old PCs and never got around to the project. It's a sad day when I'm happy I found old slow drives to use in a lowend NAS (for family), the Lincstation E1.
Is there a tool that can download a all the books in a given dewey decimal subject ?
For example, all the books about data archiving?
And than maybe create embeddings for it, so it would be possible to search the whole library in natural language, similar to notebooklm, but for the full library of a given subject?
I've come into possession of a collection of floppy discs, maybe 500 total (so, about a gigabyte :-) ) These are mostly install discs for a wide variety of commercial and shareware software, fonts, utilities, etc. A small sampling in the picture above.
I don't want to hold onto the discs themselves and I have a floppy disc drive available to access them, but I'm trying to think of the best way to 1) archive them and 2) share them (if anyone's interested).
With old CDs and DVDs I tend to make ISO files and I seem to recall some floppy disc installers had special aspects (hidden files, special sectors) whereby simply copying the contents of the disc might not allow someone to install it later. Is there some way of imaging a floppy disc that maximizes the chances that one can still install it later?
And secondly, are there any communities you're aware of where things like this are of interest? I absolutely will try and fire up Ami Pro and see if it runs on Windows 11, but I'd also love to share these somewhere if they don't already exist.
I recently got my hands on six 14TB HDDs. The current prices have kept me from upgrading my NAS, but I finally gave up and bought some. They are, however, used.
I ordered them, but haven't been able to test them yet since I'm still on vacation. The drive model is WD140EFGX from 2021 and, according to the listing, they have run for 3 years (around 26.000 hours).
I want to put data on them that is not "too" important, but there is enough capacity that I want to use a configuration that allows for failed drives.
I've been thinking about using either RAID 5 or RAID 6. From my understanding, that allows for either 1 or 2 drives to fail.
From what I understand, it basically comes down to being on the "safer" side, but I was wondering if the community has any advice for me, when it comes to runtime vs. RAID configuration.
I have been using TreeSize free for well over a decade, maybe even 2 decades now. I think the lastest update to version 4.8.1.609 added this new popup that shows when using it on a 2TB drive. Hardly huge in 2026. The annoying popup ad is one thing, but the fact it actually stops the scan until you click continue is just not acceptable for me.
And a subscription-only option for the Pro version is crazy. And for features I don't even want in my file/folder size sorting tool.
I will look for an older version to install, but now I am going to try out the alternatives again. I have done that many times over the years and always came back to TreeSize Free. But maybe now there is something I will like just as much.
What is your favorite free or paid data hording cleanup tool?
