How Do You Store Your Media? 75
somaamos asks: "Face it, you people have thousands of media items: VHS tapes, CDs, DVDs, miniDVs... where are you storing it all? I've been looking for a good storage solution which fits in with normal home furnishings -- something with high storage density, looks nice, consumes little wall space, and makes the media easy to find. Most cabinets and shelving consume lots of wall space and would store only a tenth of my media. The closest thing I've found is from CAN-AM but I'm not sure the metal finish would be suitable for my living room. I don't like the price either, but at this point that is a smaller concern. Any genius ideas out there for this one?"
You gotta start with a good rack (Score:1)
Get yourself an attractive metal rack that is sturdy enough to hold all your electronic equipment. Make sure that only the legs rest on the floor so that you have some room underneath the bottom rack to stick other stuff.
Then get some cafe curtains and cardboard boxes and throw anything that you want to keep but don't want to see out in the open in the cardboard boxes and slide the boxes under
Re:You gotta start with a good rack (Score:1)
They are the curtains from your local Starbucks - the ones that you manage to escape with after your friend creates a diversion to keep the staff distracted.
He did say it was a cheap solution.
Re:You gotta start with a good rack (Score:2)
That's advise any geek can live with
As for the cafe curtains, all I can think of is "today on Queer Eye for the Geek Guy"...hey, might be a hit show.
Related question (Score:2)
Re:Related question (Score:1)
Easy. 7-Foot tall cabinet with doors. TV inside about half way up, strapped in with earthquake straps (this is in CalEEForneeeea). Then the video and DVD stuff is above, not below, the TV. This at least extends the window out a few more years, when she'll be able to drag grownup size chairs around.
Re:Related question (Score:2)
Re:Related question (Score:2)
First time my two year old killed the VCR I took the case off and gave her a screwdriver and pliars. Then I plugged it back in!
Alright, so its not very funny, so what? It's late!
Re:Related question (Score:1)
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For example net time she breaks something, break her favorite toy. She'll learn right quick.
Re:Related question (Score:2)
Troll, you'd be teaching that a) breaking things is acceptable, b) hurting people that you love is acceptable, and c) your emotional development ceased at around the three or four year-old level, except that two year-olds don't hate and don't hurt on purpose.
Note that a two year-old is not capable of handling a DVD without scratching it, nor understanding thi
Re:Related question (Score:2)
Re:Related question (Score:2)
Re:Related question (Score:1)
I have a whole lot of experience with this one!
Here's what I did:
Two words: Vari Kennel (Score:2)
You're thinking about it backwards, protecting things from two-year-olds is basically impossible. Instead,try this: Vari Kennel [drsfostersmith.com] These are great: tough, reliable, fairly cheap, widely available, and come in different sizes.
Re:Related question (Score:2)
300GB (Score:1)
Store discs in binders (Score:2)
Re:Store discs in binders (Score:2)
You have a point. Something to consider, though, is that the video has to be compressed to fit on DVD or SVCD. In a lot of cases, that's perfectly okay. However, higher quality is sometimes needed. I'd recommend just using plain old digital tapes. Heck, if somebody'd make a little vacuum box for them, seems like that'd be the easiest way to deal with the archival issue.
MiniDV is easier to handle and more durable than DVDs,
Re:Store discs in binders (Score:1)
Re:Store discs in binders (Score:2)
Even better. Get CD binder pages [staples.com] and put them in an ordinary 3-ring binder. This way, you can insert new pages as your collection grows. This is much more convenient than leaving blank pages in the middle or reshuffling them all as you get new stuff.
obvious (Score:1)
Go custom. (Score:2)
Of course, you'll be paying through the nose.
Alternately, buy the CAN-AM stuff, then screw wood faces on the front if you want to make it look different, or paint it, or otherwise customize it.
If you were the handyman you so desperately ought to be, you wouldn't have even asked. However, building simple, nice shelving with doors or drawers is not
Re:Go custom. (Score:1)
Re:Go custom. (Score:2)
No, but if you want to send me a unit then I'll do so and send you pictures. Cherry would look nice...
-Adam
Re:Go custom. (Score:1)
Re:Go custom. (Score:2)
-Adam
Re:Go custom. (Score:1)
"Backups are for whimps" revisited (Score:2)
No, I haven't. Facing the same problem, a quick analysis showed that everything I archived could be faster be restored by downloading it from the net than by finding the relevant backup medium, with the exception of my DSL password and my private key (I hope). Hence I have only one business-card sized CD that I carry with me.
It takes a strong character however to admit that even most of your toy coding projects can easily be
Re:"Backups are for whimps" revisited (Score:1)
Re:"Backups are for whimps" revisited (Score:1)
It is much faster for me to lean over and grab a dvd or cd out of my cabinet, than it is for you to download a crappy rip which may or may not run on my particular os/hardware because of crummy codec issues.
Now, granted, you said "everything I archived", and I too could fit my home directory and useful other crap on a business card cd (or on my 20gb mp3 player / usb hd), but you're not really answering the dudes
Well, I'm not very bright... (Score:2)
I'm not advocating that people put all their data on HDs and that's it, but I woulud mention that it's always good to prioritize what's really important. Being a packrat isn't advised.
Re:Well, I'm not very bright... (Score:1)
Your well ahead of 95% of consumers.
Boltz (Score:1)
Closet space... (Score:2)
The storage units themselves weren't a kit. Nothing beats a table saw, a good mouse sander, and a trip to Home Depot. Or Lowes. Or something. Just s
My solution (Score:1)
I'm surprised no one has said.... (Score:2)
Re:I'm surprised no one has said.... (Score:2)
scour used office supply stores... (Score:2)
first off, i could swear we've discussed this before, but i'm too tired/lazy to dig up the url.
anyway, go to used office furniture stores. you'd be surprised what you can find. i found a used fireproof case, meant for 8.5" x 5.5" inch cards, like deeds, that works PERFECT for cd cases. it fits 4 across, about 75 deep, and has 5 drawers. of course, it weighs about 1200 lbs., being insulated beeyond helief, and it's not fine for the living room, but for $200 it was a bargain.
on the other side of things, i f
That isn't fireproof enough (Score:2)
Nice idea, but beware, media is more sensitive to fire than paper, thus a "firesafe" is not a good place for media in the event of a fire. You need a "mediasafe" if you want to keep media through a fire. Paper is not damaged by steam, so most "firesafes" work by having a lining with a lot of water trapped inside, when the safe gets hot that water boils, taking the energy of the fire with it.
Even if you have the right safe, they are only rated for a short time, so if you live in an area where the fire d
Re:That isn't fireproof enough (Score:2)
i didn't make myself clear enough. it's old, and insulated with about 1000 lbs. of asbestos. (eeek!)
this sucker IS capable of surviving whatever. i didn't really buy it for the fireproofness, but it's a nice bonus. the cd's fitting in perfect was the bigger selling point. that, and the really butter-smooth rolling actions of the drawers.
and since the stuff isn't being disturbed, i'm not worried about abestosis.
Re:That isn't fireproof enough (Score:1)
BTW, I think they averaged about 80 some holes per tile. (yes, i was that kid who actually had a reasonable guess as to the number of holes in the celing)
Re:That isn't fireproof enough (Score:2)
since i'm not taking off the case, scrubbing the asbestos into flaky little lung choking bits, and putting the case back on, i sleep well at night.
seriously, there's no movement against any bits of asbestos- it's lined with steel internally too.
the amount of money wasted on asbestos removal... sigh. yet another example of the economy-sapping powers of mathematical stupidity.
Re:scour used office supply stores... (Score:2)
I prefer Pine for my email!
Re:scour used office supply stores... (Score:2)
The ultimate solution was invented years ago... (Score:2)
cd/dvd-storage (Score:1)
Re:cd/dvd-storage (Score:1)
Shameless plug... (Score:1)
For any CD storage system (sleeves, jewel cases, whatever), tabbed plastic dividers come in pretty handy when you need to organize hundreds or thousands of CDs: http://discdividers.com [discdividers.com]
ikea media cabinet - 882 cds (Score:1)
small towers on stuff (Score:2)
Other than that, the st
I use "the pile" (Score:1)
Shelves (Score:1)
IKEA (Score:2)
Honestly though, mounting ISO images of CDs commonly used at work is surpassed in usefulness only by my boot floppy image collection. Now if only I could rid myself of the floppy disk entirely!
Re:IKEA (Score:2)
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue85/sipos
(Sorry, it's kind of a hack since he uses 1 DOS program, but hey it's free advice.
--Alternative:
http://www.newfreeware.com/util
--Best of luck.
or just ask us! (Score:1)
What I've done (Score:2)
I've got too much crap. It's kind of upsetting to even think about how much stuff I've acquired over the years.
With this in mind, I've given away all of my VHS tapes, permanantly loaned out my VCR, etc. I went out and bought an iPod, and started ripping all of my CD's and throwing out the jewel boxes. I also back up my data onto DVD+R's. Now I'm stuck with tons of CD-type media. I recommend getting a bunch of great big CD wallets [fellowes.com] that will fit nicely into just about any bookshelf. It might not be a
Geez (Score:1)
Doesn't everyone use an abandoned iron mine for this stuff? What rock did you hide under for the last decade?!?
built-in (into/inside walls) shelves (Score:2)
1. Cut big hole in sheet rock-- for aesthetic reasons you probably should go about the same size as other windows, but bigger is ok-- it will look like a monster picture window on the interior wall. Oh yeah, do your best to make sure you don't have power and/or pipe problems. I had to re-route a power cable, but not too bad.
2. Cut out some 2x4 framing, but probably not all. I left one in the
If you have specific needs, go with custom... (Score:2)
Keeping Track of Your Media (Score:1)
Intrigued... (Score:2)
Is that some sort of geek come-on?
Safe deposit box (Score:2)
Music CDs, movies, games, etc., really don't matter and can be insured in any case. I'm not torqued up about my kid gnawing on Tomb Raider or anything. I'm worried about stuff that I