BoxRec

Mimmy, I also have VHS that I've wanted to put on my PC and then upload but never gotten round to it due to the time it will take and I have far less tapes than Orbtastic. You should follow Orbs and Gomez advice and your away.

The sheer scale of the task is what puts me off even starting. There was a discussion on one of the boxing places about a couple of British fighters whose fights didn't seem to be readily available. Someone offered to cap all my Scrap Iron Ryan fights and some early Rhodes fights but by the time I'd sifted through all the tapes and found them, and got them boxed up and ready to post, he'd moved abroad.

I still intend to start transferring to mpeg and uploading, as it's the most versatile format and it's easy to convert to xvid/divx (avi - smaller in size, so you are compressing) or it's ready to author to DVD. I wouldn't bother with mkv as it's not a HD source (although the file is just a container for any encoded file, but a lot of people have a number of issues with mkv files compared to avi)

In these days of media players and cheapish hard disk space, DVDs are starting to become obsolete, and they have a limited shelf life anyway. You would be better off keeping it in mpeg format and archiving it off to a 2TB or 3TB external hard drive if you really wanted to keep it. The added bonus of that being that most media players have a USB port so you can just plug it into the player if you want to watch, rather than mess around on your PC.

^^ thats exactly what i was going to say funnily enough

Counter-puncher wrote:^^ thats exactly what i was going to say funnily enough

Snap.

I'd add that if you really want to keep it, then backup the backup too. It's a pain, but well worth it should the worst happen.

Turn it off and turn it back on again if it doesn't work.

Counter-puncher wrote:Turn it off and turn it back on again if it doesn't work.

Hmm... I wish. A new 1tb drive just stopped working, no knocks or anything, just didn't power up again. The drives without their own power supply seem less reliable. That said, my previous one (which I was backing up) has a problem with the adapter, apparently a common one for WD harddrives. Picked up a replacement cable but that works for 10 mins or so before cutting out. Think I need me a SAN

Yeah, best solution is a NAS with RAID.

CP how's the whole capping to your in-built disk thing going? I just have this image of an elephant shelling peas for some reason...I appreciate you may have got further with it than I have of building some compilations for you :)

orbtastic wrote:Yeah, best solution is a NAS with RAID.

I'm researching the cost now

orbtastic wrote:Yeah, best solution is a NAS with RAID.

CP how's the whole capping to your in-built disk thing going? I just have this image of an elephant shelling peas for some reason...I appreciate you may have got further with it than I have of building some compilations for you :)

failed at the first hurdle

long story short my new player doesn't record from discs, it seems. I found this out after I thought i was about 11 fights in and tried to edit the order

orbtastic wrote: I just have this image of an elephant shelling peas for some reason...

a slightly drunken elephant. in boxing gloves.

Counter-puncher wrote:

orbtastic wrote:Yeah, best solution is a NAS with RAID.

CP how's the whole capping to your in-built disk thing going? I just have this image of an elephant shelling peas for some reason...I appreciate you may have got further with it than I have of building some compilations for you :)

failed at the first hurdle

long story short my new player doesn't record from discs, it seems. I found this out after I thought i was about 11 fights in and tried to edit the order

oooof

JamesH wrote:

orbtastic wrote:Yeah, best solution is a NAS with RAID.

I'm researching the cost now

not as expensive as you first may think.

basically you're paying for a fancy box and a disk (or two) you'll never "use". The more storage you need, the more disks (although you can get away with a minimum of 3 in RAID5) - or the more storage, the bigger the disks. In these sorts of solutions you're currently capped to about 3TB, although in commercial applications the disks available are bigger.

orbtastic wrote:

JamesH wrote:

orbtastic wrote:Yeah, best solution is a NAS with RAID.

I'm researching the cost now

not as expensive as you first may think.

basically you're paying for a fancy box and a disk (or two) you'll never "use". The more storage you need, the more disks (although you can get away with a minimum of 3 in RAID5) - or the more storage, the bigger the disks. In these sorts of solutions you're currently capped to about 3TB, although in commercial applications the disks available are bigger.

Cheers for the info. It really is a lot cheaper than I'd thought. The storage networks I've seen at work were tens of thousands so I didn't expect it could be as low as it is for the 'lite' option. Nice one

Best to shop around online - dabs/amazon/scan/ebuyer/bigpockets et al.

Just check that the solution you pick is not just for the device i.e. it comes with disks. If not, it could hike up the price significantly.

orbtastic wrote:Best to shop around online - dabs/amazon/scan/ebuyer/bigpockets et al.

Just check that the solution you pick is not just for the device i.e. it comes with disks. If not, it could hike up the price significantly.

This has taken over my life Well, my afternoon at least. Still, it's a quiet day at work today anyway

I think I need to have a look over the available features and prioritise those most important to me. I like all the options with a QNAP TS-210 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/QNAP-TS-210-Ser ... 004&sr=8-1) but don't think its wireless, which would be useful.

Would it be fair to say I should be looking at paying £120-£180 for the enclosure (new)?? I certainly have one 1tb disk I can use, so only need to purchase one drive new (bl00dy hell they've gone up in price though!).

That looks a pretty flexible solution - You can slap a disk in it without mirroring or you can have two in as pure storage and then you can also mirror (RAID 0) or stripe (RAID 1) although it's not clear looking at Amazon (had to google the product).

My only gripe (and it is minor) is that it only seems to allow 2 disks, so when you need to upgrade it's going to be a pain. I suppose your disk usage would dictate that and you'd know how that is better than anyone.

Also - Do you have to find two matching disks? My experience first hand, is that you usually have to find two matching disks if you're mirroring/striping. In RAID5 sets you can have non matching disks but the size of the array is constricted by the size of the smallest (and with this device it's not a consideration as it only allows 2 disks).

Price of disks has gone up due to the flooding in the far east. 120ish looks about right for the enclosure only.

The reason I said NAS over SAN is that in the home at least, it's a slightly more flexible solution in that it's network sttached rather than physically attached to the PC - So you can do all manner of streaming to different devices and other things can use it as storage or accessing shared data etc. These days the lines between NAS & SAN are a little blurred so that often a SAN can be a NAS etc.

orbtastic wrote: These days the lines between NAS & SAN are a little blurred so that often a SAN can be a NAS etc.

yes, i am finding this a problem too.

orbtastic wrote:That looks a pretty flexible solution - You can slap a disk in it without mirroring or you can have two in as pure storage and then you can also mirror (RAID 0) or stripe (RAID 1) although it's not clear looking at Amazon (had to google the product).

My only gripe (and it is minor) is that it only seems to allow 2 disks, so when you need to upgrade it's going to be a pain. I suppose your disk usage would dictate that and you'd know how that is better than anyone.

Also - Do you have to find two matching disks? My experience first hand, is that you usually have to find two matching disks if you're mirroring/striping. In RAID5 sets you can have non matching disks but the size of the array is constricted by the size of the smallest (and with this device it's not a consideration as it only allows 2 disks).

Price of disks has gone up due to the flooding in the far east. 120ish looks about right for the enclosure only.

The reason I said NAS over SAN is that in the home at least, it's a slightly more flexible solution in that it's network sttached rather than physically attached to the PC - So you can do all manner of streaming to different devices and other things can use it as storage or accessing shared data etc. These days the lines between NAS & SAN are a little blurred so that often a SAN can be a NAS etc.

Again, cheers for taking the time, much appreciated...

I think the 2 disk limit would be ok, it says up to 4tb and even if that was across the two disks (with one being the mirror), that would give me quite a lot of room to play with. I suppose I could always do with more, think it will be price dependent. Of course, if they are 4tb each, I wouldn't look to go beyond that for some time yet (at least a couple of years). I have about 2gb of stuff now but I've only earmarked about half of that content for the NAS, leaving me a further 3tb to play with (providing I can afford the drives that size!).

Ah, of course, the floods! As I say I have at least one drive I can use, and potentially a second if the fault with that my other drive lies in the casing/fitting rather than the disk itself. Although your question about matching disks might throw that idea out. Sounds like RAID5 might still be an option though... Thats a very short term solution though as the current drives are 1tb each...

Now the tricky bit of submitting a business case to the Mrs

RAID5's not an option, that enclosure/solution only allows you two disks. You need a minimum of 3 disks for RAID5.

The 4TB limit, I suspect is down to the current availability of hard drive sizes, I think the biggest you can currently buy is 3TB. obviously with "just" 2 disks in there, making 4TB available means there's no RAID at all, either striping or mirroring. It just means that you have 2 x 2TB disks available to write to, so there's no redundancy or fault tolerance built-in.

To have 4TB in a fault tolerant solution, you would need TWO 4TB disks, which you can't even buy (yet) and given the price of 3TB disks, you're looking at silly money once they do become available.

Just so you are aware...

orbtastic wrote:RAID5's not an option, that enclosure/solution only allows you two disks. You need a minimum of 3 disks for RAID5.

The 4TB limit, I suspect is down to the current availability of hard drive sizes, I think the biggest you can currently buy is 3TB. obviously with "just" 2 disks in there, making 4TB available means there's no RAID at all, either striping or mirroring. It just means that you have 2 x 2TB disks available to write to, so there's no redundancy or fault tolerance built-in.

To have 4TB in a fault tolerant solution, you would need TWO 4TB disks, which you can't even buy (yet) and given the price of 3TB disks, you're looking at silly money once they do become available.

Just so you are aware...

Ah I see. I'm going to have to have a read up on the subject, will give me time to save for a case with the features I want but with slots for 3 disks, and then the disks to go with it. Cheers for info.

best not to rush into these things, I find!