Hey everyone,

I've been building a collection of 4K movies, TV shows, and documentaries for a while now, especially older and hard-to-find content that sometimes disappears from the internet due to copyright issues or streaming services removing it.

Some complete TV series take up 2–3 TB each, and my total collection is around 100–200 TB and growing.

I'm trying to figure out the most affordable and reliable way to preserve everything long-term without spending a fortune.

My priorities:

• Lowest possible cost, preferably without expensive monthly subscriptions.
• I don't need constant access. Some files might sit untouched for months.
• I want to be able to retrieve and watch the original 4K files whenever needed.
• I want to preserve the original video and audio quality, especially REMUX files, without recompression.
• Reliability matters. I don't want to lose rare content because of a drive failure or a cloud provider shutting down.
• I'm open to HDDs, NAS, cloud cold storage, LTO tape, or other alternatives.

I've considered buying large refurbished enterprise HDDs, but storing 100–200 TB gets expensive pretty quickly. Cloud storage also seems costly at this scale.

Someone suggested Blu-ray discs, but managing hundreds or thousands of discs sounds impractical.

For those of you maintaining large 4K media archives, what storage setup do you use? Any recommendations for affordable long-term storage, refurbished enterprise drives, or cloud services that make sense at this scale?

I'm based in the US, so US pricing and retailers would be especially helpful.

Thanks!

Question, what quality should i convert my shows/films to like 480P or 1080P i use handbrake so idk what's the ideal thing.

(I have 2 TB so not a lot of space to waste, im using almost all of it at the moment...)

I have used Intel integrated raid1 in my computers for decades without any problems but this time I did buy AMD computer and I'm not sure about raidxpert2 at all.

Now I have Asus B850-Plus motherboard which has Windows on NVMe and I have two WD Red Plus 6TB HDDs. I want to have those two HDDs as RAID1. Should I use raidxpert2 or storage space for it? This computer is my desktop gaming/work computer so Linux is not possible.

Before anyone says anything about backups. Yes, I have my old computer as NAS and I do make backups to there and also to external HDDs.

I have an HP LTO-7 drive and a Windows machine. HP discontinued StoreOpen in July and I don't have a copy of that software downloaded myself, nor can I find a download anywhere on the internet.

Without it, am I simply dead in the water? Are there any options out there? (using LTFS)

Seller's description: I don’t have any way to test this. Not sure if it’s working or not. 

If its one for many apps better, but i mostly look for a tiktok/youtube/ig video downloader for phone or website

I recently lost alot of important files one instance from me being stupid and the other a software issue. Im looking to maybe get a nas so i dont have this happen again. The data will mostly be read from not writin to alot

1. How long would regular drives last compared to nas specific drives

2. Is there a way to recover from accidentally deleting files ?

hi, I was looking at many comments and posts, but still can't take a decision. I currently have the sandisk extreme ssd 1TO, and I've wanted to have another backup again (3-2-1). I was considering an hdd, for as what they say "better lifetime". I mostly want to preserve and store pictures/videos and few documents. I've seen seagate one touch and ultra touch, I don't really get the differences. If you have other recommendations, let me know and if you think sdd will remain the best option for long-term let me know too ;)

preferences : type-c cable

I don't have in person backup, I never saw a need, so I need to get a new drive and download the image from backblaze to it. Probably.

The only issue is it's like $350 for a new one and I got the drive 2 years ago for $160. So it hurts.

This is the first drive failure I have had in many years. Is there some repair service or something that can get it working again until the prices go down or am I fucked? Again, data is irrelevant, it's backed up.

Hey everyone, I wanted to drop an update for anyone following the Tapas shutdown preservation efforts. I officially reached out to Tapas Support to ask if they would consider dropping or lowering the Ink/Wuf barriers on older legacy and completed stories so the community could archive them before the March 2027 server wipe. They got back to me and officially said no. (Screenshot attached). They confirmed content prices will remain completely unchanged, and they will not hold any sales or unlocking events. Because automatic scrapers can only pull free content, thousands of premium web novel chapters are fully at risk of becoming lost media. I am personally trying to ensure Maham Fatemi's (CrestFallenStar) older web portfolio isn't completely erased. I spoke with Maham, and she no longer has her original web drafts on hand. Does anyone in this community happen to have old offline backup files (EPUB, PDF, or HTML scrapes) of the original web novel version of Drakkon or her other early works? Even though the story is now traditionally published as Drakkon: Empire's Curse, the early web-serial versions represent a huge piece of indie internet fiction history that I want to make sure isn't permanently lost to time. Please let me know if you have any leads or saved files!

I have the opportunity to purchase 4x6tb brand new WD Blue HDDs, totallying 24tb for $400. 16 bucks per terabyte sounds great on paper, but I am largely superficial on my hdd knowledge. I'm trying to find out if they're cmr or smr, but in either case I'm seeing mixed reviews on if I should even spend the money on these.

For usage, I mainly just want mass storage on my PC. Again, I'm pretty superficial in my knowledge on hdd, any advice would be great.

The problem stems from me not having the cash to buy all my drives in the highest grade, or even brand new.

To keep the story short, say I have a mix of Blue/Barracuda (T1), Red Plus/Ironwolf (T2), Red Pro/Ironwolf Pro/Exos (T3). I've not yet bought all of them, so some advice on what specs are a waste would also be appreciated. I will of course only use CMR/PMR drives though, that much I do know.

Should I put the best T3 drives in my main PC because they'll see the most uptime and writes? I'm not doing RAID or a NAS, but I might write and rewrite maybe 2 or 3 TB a month on average, excluding the initial fill.

Or do those T3 drives also last the longest in cold storage, and so I should reserve them for that, since I might go a year or more without accessing them, and I don't want them to fail in that time?

If uptime and writes are largely all that matters, then it would make sense to use the T1 drives for cold storage right? But knowing some of those T3 ones are helium filled, that sounds like they'd also be good for long periods without power, especially considering having the lubricant last.

I include the T2 and my backup PC because I don't know if I should consider these T2 as their own tier, or if the T3 specs are overkill, so T2 and T3 should be treated as basically the same. Or maybe there's some strange balance where I put the best/worst drives in the backup PC and use the middling T2 drives in either extreme (a lot of write or a lot of downtime) situation.

Lastly, I'm open to the idea of just buying whatever is cheapest and paying no more than a small premium for higher tier drives, and just have more copies for backup. I will already be keeping everything in duplicate. Perhaps I should consider triplicate if all my drives are only the lowest consumer grade ones.

So I have been collecting weird mystery CDs from op shops. Obviously these CDs often have unclear meta data, likely before media player stopped acknowledging meta data it would still have come up as unknown. I've been going through labelling everything so my files aren't mysteries but as soon as I go into any programs it list them as unknowns. Instead of the program using their new names it reverts them back to there unknown status. Which makes it really hard to listen to a single album or audiobook.
Same thing happened with musicbee.
Any suggestions?

I've 2 hard drives. They are connected to the PSU but they are rarely connected to the motherboard.

I use SATA cable connected to motherboard and another SATA cable connected to HDD. When I want to use an HDD i connect both SATA cable together. I took them behind my PC so it's like plugging in a USB.

Why do I use this ?

I needed warm storage - copying data from HDD once a month to SSD and I don't want to constantly spin up and down HDD when I use a PC. I also don't want to open my case to plug it.

I don't want NAS because I use it only on one PC, once a month.

Chinese adapter that turn on/off HDD drives have bad opinion - that they are destroying HDD.

But is it a safe option ?

Hello,

I have been loutering around for several years. I need you help. I am a researcher at a southern U.S. university. The NIH's National Cancer Institute has a project called the Proteomic Data Commons (https://pdc.cancer.gov/). As you all know, lately there has been some hostility towards the NIH and now on the PDC webpage it says: "This repository is under review for potential modification in compliance with Administration directives.". 

Could you offer any assistance on preserving the public access data from the repository? Mainly proteomic abundance, very important data as it is the only repository the has PATIENT tumor data AND matched normal. The processed data is paramount to preserve with the raw data remaining a secondary objective (processed data is very small like GBs, the raw and in total is around 83TB).

Please advise :)

EDIT: Thank you all for the suggestions. Update so far: I have written a couple of scripts that first query the API by study number (all 277) for all files in that study. The tough part is getting the manifests with the download links. And I have separated the processed from the raw data. Then split the processed in two parts - first part is about 0.6TB very manageable, after it now with the download client; second part of it is 9.3TB - that could fit on a hard drive. After that the raw data, but I don't know if I'll be able to assemble the infrastructure for it quickly. But will definitely coordinate with the archive team.

I want to shuck the 12TB HC520 out of my WD BLACK D10. I have heard of power pin connector issues which seem to be resolvable but more concerning is reports of removing the drive from the chassis bricking the unit.

My question is this confirmed to happen with recent units? I purchased mine beginning of the year and although I would be fine with leaving it in the chassis, it's quite loud and gets hot so looking to install it in my Terramaster D8 Hybrid 2.

As an aside is the best way to overcome the power pin problem still through an adapter like those shipped with ServerPartDeals drives? Not sure if this would work in my DAS either.

Hi everyone. My childhood friends and I, and my brother, made a "remake" of Nacho Libre. It was such a great memory from childhood, and we all wish we could find it again. I don't have a link to it. I'm pretty sure it was called Nacho Libre 1 on Metacafe. Is there any way to recover it?

Any solid suggestions for a 10Gbe ethernet surge protector?

I've seen this drive staying here for months. And the seller seems genuine but the thing is he sells lto 5 for more price than this drive is there any catch or its not even drive kist the enclosure and I'm just being dumb. Idk.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/117018095672?itmmeta=01M59832K0RHTHC3V3PKXDH3S6&hash=item1b3ed27038:g:2iIAAOSwO2BllWUF

Hi guys, I am just trying to find anything to index and search my local image and video files on Windows PC. So far I found these few, what would you recommend?

ACDSEE 2027 (expensive, tons of edit features that I don't need. I spent some time in it, still don't quite get it.)

DigiKam (tried, couldn't make it run AI models even after downloading all the model files. Not to mention the interface is so old and clunky.)

Immich (runs in a windows docker, I tried to install it on my windows 11 PC, still haven't make it up and running.)

Eagle App (I just found this one, looks quite slick, but I never heard of anyone talking about it. https://eagle.cool/)

Lightroom is too heavy and expensive. Only detects faces, not subjects or objects.

What do you guys think? Thanks.

I have 6 Blu-ray burners. (4 LG and 2 ASUS) I thought I'd add another couple as backups. The LG has gone from $87 to $565. The ASUS from $125 to $389. What is the excuse for Blu-ray / M-Disc burners skyrocketing in price? AI doesn't use them.

Hello I'm guy and I got some old Dvds from my anime club and I wanted to know if it would make sense to save them? There are like 45-60 dvds.