Media Cataloging Software? 45
Rich0 asks: "I have a growing pile of CDs/DVDs holding hundreds of GB of files. I would like a linux-compatible software solution to cataloging and searching these disks. Lots of solutions exist for music/video, but not so many for files. The software should have the ability to easily scan disks: pop in disc; software reads disc; software prompts for a name (with something sensible defaulted); software ejects disc; software tells me what if any label to write/apply to the disc; and software is ready for the next disc. I've seen one or two packages out there but they usually require lots of manual disk labelling, or their search capabilities are limited. Windows-only software won't be of much use to me. What are others using to manage their media collections?"
The answer always is... (Score:4, Insightful)
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I've run into variations of this time and time again, people with floppies, people with CDs and Zip drives, with a whole library of them, and needing to get them organized. People going out and buying a CD-R jukebox with 7 CD drives in it to stick on their server, when it'd be cheaper to copy the data to a hard drive and serve it that way.
When you have a bunch of removable media you need to archive, in the last de
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Even if you manage to catalog all the data on your cd's/dvd's, you'll have to keep working on keeping it updated, and it still doesn't allow you to figure out where you left your stuff anyway (did a friend borrow it? did it fall under the sofa?). You can't use locate to find physical items yet, so even if you've catalogued everything, what do
Just get 4 500GB harddisks (Score:2, Offtopic)
You've mentioned hundreds of gigabytes - that transfers to 999GB of data - this is not THAT much. Actually right now you can get like a PC (with lowest spec - these are not important here) with 4 disks of 500GB capacity each. Use SATA2 devices - they are fastest in cheap range. When you'll get your 4 drives put them into PC. Install OpenSolaris and spawn them into Z-RAID and ZFS - you will get yourself quite cheap storage.
You will get 1TB of redundant and self-healing data storage. C
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I have 10 years old CD's that are perfect when scanned. I don't trust HD's as much as I've had some go bad just sitting on a shelf. Not that they've gone completely bad but half a dozen corrupted files among a million is just not good en
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Put in binders, put binders at someone elses house, in fire box, or even a safty deposit box if you care that much.
Your CDs will last longer not being slid in and out of a binder, or take up less space not being in a jewel case. Your hard drive is now just a very fancy index for your archive (in that it has the full informa
Seconded (Score:2)
The problems I found were...
If you have been unorganised when assembling these CDs full of files then a catalog of the contents doesn't help much. If you don't know a filename (and the filename is obfuscated) then you're going to have a hard time finding it.
If your search brings back several potential resul
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Hardware failures, viruses. I would rather not risk it.
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Who said about not making backups? I did? No.
> Hardware failures, viruses. I would rather not risk it.
Yeah because CDs that you throw around are that much safer without backup.
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If the 'on site' copy acts strange in the least during a restore, then the off site one gets duplicated.
And while you may not have discounted the use of backups WITH the hardrives, many people really do think they don't have to have backups. " i have raid... "
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> and one that i 'use'.
And you have no clue if the offsite copy still works.
> If the 'on site' copy acts strange in the least during a restore, then
> the off site one gets duplicated.
Yes but the offsite one may not work - do you always check them if they are OK? Filesystem like ZFS has self-healing capabilities so paired with redundant data storage (meaning the data is copied over two discs) it can detect faults "on the fly" and
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2 - Yes, off-sites are verifed. ( on a regular schedule )
3 - There is also a tape that goes out to different site once a month. But its never been used, thats the last case emergency.
4 - Yup properly labeled and cataloged. ( in house softare, so it wouldn't have helped the or
Wine (Score:1)
Also, seconded for copying everything to a huge disk and being done with it. If it's that important
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Don't help the pack rat (Score:3, Funny)
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Keep telling yourself that.
just use find (Score:1)
wrap it in a shell script if you want to be prompted.
or under windows: dir
It's not that hard, you don't really need any special software.
You forgot the sensible default! (Score:2, Funny)
while
do
# software prompts for a name
echo "insert next disk and type in a name"
read x
if [[ $x == "" ]]
then
x=midget # sensible default
fi
# software reads disc
ls
# software ejects disc eject
# software tells you what if any label to write/apply to the disc
echo "Write '$x pr0n' on the ejected disk."
# software is ready for the next disc
done
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1. cdcat
2. gwhere
3. gtktalog
4. katalog
already.
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I'm looking for one too, that truly supports Unicode filenames on Win32, and still searching...
Translation (Score:2, Funny)
MediaPortal is what you want (Score:2, Offtopic)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mediaportal/ [sourceforge.net]
If you are really set on Linux, XBMC is being ported to Linux but you will have to wait a while.
http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/wiki/?title=Linux_p ort_project [xboxmediacenter.com]
I run an old Gen 1 XBOX modded with XBMC and it does everying I need for CD, DVD, media management. The only draw back is the low end hardware of the XBOX. There are limitations with running HD video etc... It ma
gtktalog (Score:3, Interesting)
The nice thing about it, is on debian based distros it is never any farther away than apt-get install gtktalog
Windows Only isnt an option? (Score:1)
dont do this (Score:1)
I've got apache, mysql and php running
The utility saves the text files to a folder under the web servers documents and i run a php script that renames the text files with a random number/letter combo, enters every line of text as a unique record in the database parented to the unique name of the dvd itself and I write that unique string on the dvd label.
Its pretty straight forward and only took 2 we
What I do (Score:1)
Usually, i start sorting things out on my HDD. Once that is at capacity, i've moved them on to CD's. Now with DVDs cheap as dirt, i've been using those for a while. My problem has always been the different DVDs.
So what I do now, is have about 5 logictech cases of 320/420 disc capacity. Each one is broken down into a "theme." I have 3 other smaller c