The Great Purge of 06 Has Begun
feel the burn
No, I have not started slaughtering the Jedi, but my current undertaking is nearly as ominous and potentially as difficult (at least for me).
For the first time in about five years, I am actively archiving home data from my “tier 1″ storage (sadly = ATA and SATA disk) straight to archival media (DVD+R single layer, at this point).[0]
This decision and subsequent action is driven by a combination of factors:
1. Recent loss of a hard drive acting as disk-based backup for my iTunes library (”Audio Core”)
2. A lockdown on year-end funds from my CIO
3. 1+2 = current loss of backup for said iTunes library, which is a code-orange operational alert, necessitating the need for reclamation of disk real-estate for that purpose
4. The firm realization that I have way too much video data[1] on tier-1 storage that I only occasionally watch, but am not willing to permanently part with or invest the time to re-rip as necessary
5. The begrudging realization that although I would generally recommend none of my customers (nor my worst enemy) use optical media (at least of a non-magneto-optical nature) as backup for any number of reasons [2], it might fit the bill[3] for this particular mission
6. ATA disk is just so f(!@#)ng unreliable when you don’t have RAID protecting it. That may not be a particularly politic assertion given my job (which sometimes involves designing solutions featuring always RAID-protected ATA and SATA disk), but it’s so, so true.
So here I find myself with Toast open, dragging my handbrake-ripped copy of Star Trek: The Next Generation - the Complete Seventh Season to burn, baby, burn when the question pops up (sort of like that old VH-1 show, Pop Up Video[4]: how am I going to index this stuff when it gets spread across 1, 10, 100, 6×10^23 DVDs?
There are a number of OS X utilities that will keep indexes for me, but I’m a real man, dammit. My solution is going to have to be incredibly complex to the point of (and perhaps beyond) non-usability before I’m happy with it.
What am I going to do with / how am I going to use this metadata when all is said and done? Will I ever be able to find a single thing I archive off to DVD? These are not important questions for now, fool, for they will all be answered anon. Stay tuned.
[1] All legitimately, uh, handbrake‘d from my own DVD collection, mind.
[2] Poor and variable shelf life, marginal cost-per-GB value, horrible options for automation, sub-shite performance.
[3] Probably more reliable than spinning disk given c 1940’s fuse-based electrical grid in my house, relatively low cost barrier to entry, DR suitability.
[4] The example pop-up in the Wiki features Lisa Loeb, who is hot.
[0] It should probably be noted that this great purge actually began last week within iTunes, but that’s another post.
[ image source ]
December 7th, 2006 at 8:15 am
Well this brings to mind some of the things that you talked to us when you were out in your official capacity. And that was data classification.
I have an archive system for some of my personal data, primarily because the hard drive in the PC my wife uses is only 80 GB and she takes a ton of pictures about a 512 MB card’s worth every week or two. So I need to move the old ones out. That too is another post for another time.
What I find interesting and somewhat confusing is that you’re archiving your ripped DVD collection. Given the time, effort and expense for archiving what you already have in original format seems excessive. Considering the fact that you only occasionally watch it, wouldn’t just be easier to pop the original DVD into your drive and watch it?
Yes I know not as much fun as coming up with a really complex indexing and retrieval systems, but way less time consuming.
–ken
December 7th, 2006 at 11:44 am
yeah. good point. i didn’t really go into excess detail on the full nature of the data, which is important to do given the level of effort i’m going through:
a) data ripped from my DVDs
note: the primary purpose for this ripping is to take stuff on the road for watching. And believe it or not, given the time investment involved in running handbrake, it is preferable (to me) to have a copy of the handbrake stuff archived over re-ripping it.
now i _could_ always re-rip if necessary, but that would just be horribly depressing.
b) stuff yanked off my TiVo
yoink.
c) stuff i bittorrented that I could have ripped off my tivo…
ex. if i actually programmed it to record the entire “America’s Next Top Model Series 6 Marathon”. Yeah, entering a bit of a legal grey (or red) area here.
d) random, wildly multi-source video content that wouldn’t kill me to lose (or I could download again), but goddamn it, some friday night’s it’s just good to have it around, spray it on a wall and zone out
ex. the 14.2GB of E3 video I downloaded from IGN this year. I wish I were kidding.
e) finally, the rarefied, essential. self-created video stuff.
ex. the stuff i’ll eventually win an academy award for. about 120GB.
Glad you asked the question - it was somewhat misleading to indicate it was all a bunch of ripped DVD content.