[REL] el Laberinto del Fauno (2006)

[Night457]

We may never see 8K bluray. It would probably require a UV laser to read such discs, and they're moving away from physical media, so I wouldn't be surprised if 4K bluray is the limit for optical disc technology.

That does seem to be the consensus of opinion, and I have no reason to disagree. I do not see any advantage in yet another spinning plastic disc compressed video format anyway. (And I say this as a long-time disc fan, sitting here surrounded by shelves with thousands of the damn things.) If a "film" is going to be transferred to a digital format, then if not a digital download it should be uncompressed on a solid state drive. DCP for the home viewer!

[Phuzzy4242]

(And I say this as a long-time disc fan, sitting here surrounded by shelves with thousands of the damn things.)

Bite the bullet and get a RAID disk array. A ProSonic 4-disc unit (USB) is around $125 and four 4TB WD drives are around $320. Everything is instantly accessible and total cost is less than all those DVD's, especially when you add in the time it takes to burn each one - or to find a particular file on all those discs. With RAID5, you lose nothing if a hard drive fails- just pop in a replacement drive and its all good. Just FYI - with four 4TB drives you actually have around 11TB usable because the rest is used to protect your data in case of a hdd failure.

I can vouch for the ProSonics - I've had one for 3 years and the other for 1 year. I also have a NAS and some external drives so I have around 40TB sitting on a desk. What can I say, I like all those blinky lights.

[Night457]

Everything is instantly accessible and total cost is less than all those DVD's, especially when you add in the time it takes to burn each one - or to find a particular file on all those discs.

This is crazy talk! Do you mean I should rip and store over 4000 DVDs and I dunno how many blu-rays? I need time to actually WATCH movies, and it takes me no time at all to let them sit and collect dust. I am going to die without rewatching most of them anyway.

Now, if you are talking RAID just for storing new downloads, that makes sense. But ...

Just FYI - with four 4TB drives you actually have around 1TB usable because the rest is used to protect your data in case of a hdd failure.

Wait ... what? Wouldn't 4x4TB RAID give you 4TB usable??? Essentially 1 full drive and 3 backups? If it is only 1/16 storage that is vastly inefficient. If I am going to spend $320, I can do so for a full 16TB, and if I lose movies I likely am not going to watch again, I'll live. ghost will probably release an upgrade soon anyway! And if only 1TB is usable, that means a library of multiple full hard drives, which I have, and it can be hard to find a particular file on THEM. "Wait, did I download this in the first half of 2020 or was it in 2019? Which drive is that, dammit?" Whereas finding a particular shiny disc is not hard at all, as those are all organized.

That said, I am moving away from buying the discs, and downloading instead, so I should not need to build any more shelves at least.

[Phuzzy4242]

Sorry, I mis-typed. You have 11TB usable (fixed it), and yes I'm saying store the discs on the RAID. It took me about two weeks to copy all my discs. I admit to cheating a little since I have a DVD and BR in the computer itself and used two external DVD drives too. There are approximately 12000 movies and other videos on it, along with all my audio files, books, and software installations. Over 100,000 files total, and still have 4TB free.

If you use 5TB drives instead, your cost will go up some but you'll have around 14TB available. RAID5 doesn't make 4 duplicates of every file, it splits each file up across 4 drives and creates a "rebuild track" across all 4 drives too. This is why you don't have a full 16TB available, but it's well worth the space used because If one drive fails, the other 3 drives still have 3/4ths of the file contents and the "rebuild track" fills in the missing pieces. Access will be slower until you replace the bad hard drive but at least you haven't lost anything. When you install the replacement, the "rebuild track" rebuilds what was originally on the bad drive onto the new one and you're back in business. Many RAID arrays are "hot-swapable" - you don't even have to turn off the RAID to pull a drive out and put another in. Of course, if two drives fail simultaneously, you're pretty much SOL.

I've had way too many hard drives fail over the years. Now I have two ProSonic RAID5 boxes and a RAID5 NAS, along with a couple external 5TB drives. Of course, I'm a computer geek and had a bunch of old hd's laying around. LOL Even so, I bought four new hd's for the main RAID. I haven't had any failures on my system but I've used RAID5 at work for years. Getting it for home was well worth it to me.

[Night457]

11TB (out of 16) is definitely worthwhile, that's much better! I don't see myself taking the time to rip discs I likely will never watch again anyway, nor taking the effort to box them up and get rid of them. (Someone can do that when I am dead -- ha ha, not my problem!) However, a RAID for my downloads is a terrific idea. Thanks!

[Phuzzy4242]

As usual I screwed up the name. It's made by MediaSonic and it's called ProRaid. This one is $170 new (price went up since I bought the second one) but you can get them cheaper refurb'ed or used, or more expensive if they're gouging you.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Mediasonic-PRO ... Sw91tegnts