Help archiving hundreds of DVDs/CDs for my IT department.

[speedkills]

unRaid may or may not be involved in the solution to the problem I stumbled into today but being expert digital hoarders I thought you guys might be able to help.  I already use unRaid at home but was dealing with the problem of searching for a CD at work today and after going through my 3rd large book of 500 CDs (you know, MSDNs, HP drivers, various boot disks, etc.) and finding many of them damaged and unreadable I realized we really need to start storing all of these somewhere.

 

Here are my requirements.

We only have $500 to spend, any more and we need to get approval from a manager.

We have plenty of unused computers, but don't have unused disks.

We have all of our original CDs but would love to be able to find them and mount them over the network or quickly burn a replacement if needed.

Performance is a non-issue.

Automated ripping would be great, or if there are not any good programs to do that at least something that made ripping as easy as possible.

We have the originals, utmost reliability of the storage media isn't an issue, some redundancy is warranted to save effort of a disk failure though.

2TB would handle all of our storage needs, this isn't a huge storage concern, just a pain in the butt always trying to find disks.

 

I could go anywhere from throwing together an office unRaid server and buying another unRaid license to just throwing a couple of external 2TB USB drives on one of our windows servers and doing software mirroring.  Is there any good software to automate the iso creation process as much as possible?  I suppose ideally if there was room I could even see ripping bootable disks twice, once to .iso and once to just the files to make network searching easier.  If the disk isn't bootable I don't think there is any advantage to having the iso, we would just copy the files to a folder on the network but having software that automatically created and named a folder, copied the files over, then ejected the cd to let me know it was time to swap cds would be really handy.

 

Would the snap plugin for unraid be the way to go?  Something open source or only a few hundred dollars is fine too.  Linux/Windows/Mac software is all fine by me.

 

Any great ideas?

 

Good ideas even?

 

Thanks,

 

-Shane

 

[speedkills]

Just trying to keep an open mind here, if anyone knows of any really great CD storage systems I would be interested in that too.  There must be something better than these stacks of large cd books we have here.

[bkasten]

Well, I have never automated the process, but at work and at home I have for a LONG time created iso's or dmg's, or whatever for what ever software has been brought in. This includes updated software for the vendor sites.

 

Once the CD's, DVD's or downloads are there, using them is a snap, just mount the iso remotely to the working desktop and go, no need to burn, most of the time.

 

I use to keep a remote usb drive on my router just for this, but with the event of unRAID in my life, it is now just a share on my server.

 

I have a hard time seeing how the process could be automated, after all, you want the files sorted in a folder structure that you can then find them when you want.

 

I have always used whatever tools the OS in question provided.

 

I am not much help I know, but I thought I would at least comment.

 

Bruce

[speedkills]

I'm still googling around but always like to ask actual people as well as our computer overlords

 

It appears most of the solutions I am seeing so far fall into the virtual drive manager category (that may work out well) or are actually just physical storage units with software and automation to catalog and find your actual cds.  That would work fine too but if so I would like to find a unit with a scanner that would at least scan the disk label in so I could virtually browse them.

[queeg]

If all you have to buy is some hard drives and the unRAID software then I think it's very possible to assemble a cheap solution.

If you have enough hardware for an additional box you could also put together a ripping station.

 

For my ripping station I added 4 DVD ($20 apiece) drives to one of my machines which runs Windows 7.  I wrote this utility that you could modify to run any particular ripping/copying software you needed.  It watches the DVD drives you assign to it and launches the ripping software when you insert one.  You could assign all 4 if you wanted.  It will process each one in turn and then open the DVD drawer when done so you can load it up again.  No other intervention is needed.  

It won't catalog them automatically but maybe with some creativity a method could be cobbled together.

[kizer]

Exactly what I would turn. Turn every disk into an iso. Either mount via unRAID or download something like Deamon Tools to look in each disc.

 

Most of the time I create ISO's just so I know I have a backup of something incase I loose the original and lord knows I have many times in my house. I think I've burned a copy of XMBC at least 8 times in the last year or so. I belive I used FireBurner in the past to create ISO's, but its been a long time.

 

Catalog I suppose you could create folders based on content and archive them.

 

I was looking through google and typed in "create iso command line"

http://www.google.com/search?q=create+iso+command+line&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7DMUS&safe=strict

 

Wow how about creating an ISO from a folder on your machine?

http://www.shivaranjan.com/2006/09/26/how-to-create-iso-file-from-folders-and-cd-dvd/

[Rajahal]

Another simple solution might be to use sikuli to create a short script that automates ImgBurn to create an ISO from each disc and save it to the unRAID server.  ImgBurn can also be set to eject the disc once it is done, so all you would have to do is put in another disc, name it, and hit 'go'.  Actually, I'm not sure how useful the sikuli script would even be as ImgBurn is pretty push-button already.

[bubbaQ]

As for unreadable CD/DVDs....

 

I had a few of those, but they had stuff I needed to keep so I didn't throw them away even though nothing I had would cleanly read them.

 

I also have a number of DVD's that were unreadable due to "use" by nieces and nephews.

 

I do have a motorized scratch remover, that works wonders, but it didn't fix all of them.

 

Last year, however, I got this new DVD drive from Newegg:

 

  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204&Tpk=27-135-204

 

And it made a HUGE difference.  Every disk that I could not read in my other drives was readable in this drive with no errors.  It was like they never had a problem.  At under $20, it was well worth the 10 times the price.

 

So I made ISO backups of every important disk in my kit (about 80) to unRAID, and then backed those up to a spare drive and put it in the safe.

[speedkills]

Great tip.  I have noticed that some drives read damaged disks better than others so it's nice to have see a recommended drive that has proven itself so well.

 

I still haven't decided on a good solution but may just end up burning each disk by hand and including a good description of what it is in the title.  I saw a few of those automated DVD catalogue utilities and realize what they are all missing is a imaging sensor/scanner built in.  Cheap imaging sensors are only a few dollars or less these days, when someone is selling a $100 unit to hold your dvds and help you find them imagine how much more helpful it would be if instead of just allowing you to type in the metadata would actually take a picture of the front of the disk when it is inserted into the unit.  Sometimes you know what you are looking for by seeing the disk and it would allow a nice coverflow type browsing which would be handy if your search result returned 10 matching disks.

[kizer]

When ever I had an issue with reading a disc I normally head to the sink honestly. Luke warm water and a little lite soap to clean the surface. 90% of the time it was something stuck to the surface and after a few minutes of cleaning the disk and shaking the heck out of it to get the water off.

 

Of course I had a few disks that looked like somebody took a belt sander to it and it was no way going to be readable.

[bubbaQ]

First rule is preservation.... save each one to an iso file.

 

It is real simple to gen up some php code that finds all the .iso files in a dir, and makes links to the .iso, and use an image with the same name but .jpg extension.  So save the .iso files, and scan the disk cover to a .jpg file of the same name, and you have have a simple html interface for selecting them.

[johnny121b]

Of course I had a few disks that looked like somebody took a belt sander to it and it was no way going to be readable.

 

I've actually had luck with acetone in those cases- the diluted variety (fingernail polish remover).  About 3-5 seconds does wonders sometimes.  It's easy to overdo it.  I practiced on a lot of junk discs, but it works. 

[Velkitor]

Of course I had a few disks that looked like somebody took a belt sander to it and it was no way going to be readable.

 

I've actually had luck with acetone in those cases- the diluted variety (fingernail polish remover).  About 3-5 seconds does wonders sometimes.  It's easy to overdo it.  I practiced on a lot of junk discs, but it works. 

 

I use the dish soap method...  Sounds crazy but it works.

Take your favorite dish soap, flip the disk data side up, and put a nice sized drop on there.  Gently press and move the dish soap around in a circle.  Supposidly dish soap has some wax in it, and that will settle in the cracks.  After you are done rubbing the soap in wait 30 seconds or so, rinse it off.  Pat it dry to remove any water spots from the data side, and let it sit to dry.

 

This method usually takes care of discs with a lot of small scratches.  If there are gouges good luck.

[mcs]

+1 for the dish soap method. It works for 80% of the disks which my desk top cannot read on the first attempt.

 

Then I have an antique laptop which can read half of the disks the desk top couldn't even after cleaning with dish soap.

[Rajahal]

+2 for dish soap.  I used to use that method all the time...then I discovered unRAID and I have rarely dealt with optical media since.

[furymaster]

I used car polish for light colors until I bought this beauty:

 

http://www.cd-kopierer.com/disc-devil-poliermaschine.html

 

Never had any problems with unreadable DVDs or Blurays since using this machine. It isn't cheap, but worth every penny!

[kizer]

There is a game company down the road that sells used CD's. They use a machine that looks just like that.

[furymaster]

I do some 100 repairs per week. Mostly scratched DVDs, but also Blurays and Audio-CDs. They shine like new after 2 minutes 

[SSD]

I do some 100 repairs per week. Mostly scratched DVDs, but also Blurays and Audio-CDs. They shine like new after 2 minutes 

 

But you could buy a lot of replacement DVDs, BluRays, and Audio-CDs for 1563 euros (~$2150)!

[furymaster]

I do some 100 repairs per week. Mostly scratched DVDs, but also Blurays and Audio-CDs. They shine like new after 2 minutes 

 

But you could buy a lot of replacement DVDs, BluRays, and Audio-CDs for 1563 euros (~$2150)!

 

Not really. We've been using this machine for about 4 months, doing about 100 repairs per week, makes about 1600 repairs since buing the machine. So, the machine paid off very quick - repair costs (grinding pad and fluid) are about 10 cent each repair run and thus very cheap.

 

Rebuing those 1600 DVDs would have been a lot more expensive than that.

 

BTW: I fear we're going off topic ...

[vexhold]

If you want automation, talk to a manager and take a look at our systems. They are not cheap, but they kick some butt with media duplication and ISO creation.

 

http://www.rimage.com/products/professional-series/5400n.html

[furymaster]

If you want automation, talk to a manager and take a look at our systems. They are not cheap, but they kick some butt with media duplication and ISO creation.

 

http://www.rimage.com/products/professional-series/5400n.html

 

I'm not quite sure if your products are what the OT wanted - your solutions back up to DVD or Blu-ray, indeet the OT wanted to store the discs in an - more or less - secure server with some kind of tagging solution.

[vexhold]

I was talking in regards to his automation of ripping disk media to ISOs. He states he has hundreds. Plop all of them in the machine and come back the next day and they are all in ISO format at the location of choice.

 

In regards to the storage location, unRAID baby!

[furymaster]

I was talking in regards to his automation of ripping disk media to ISOs. He states he has hundreds. Plop all of them in the machine and come back the next day and they are all in ISO format at the location of choice.

 

In regards to the storage location, unRAID baby!

 

Uh, the website doesn't tell anything about the fact that this machine is capable of this. It only shows that it is a very fine production center for CDs/DVDs/Blurays with perfect printing of the media surface. Doesn't show the archive system at all.

 

And yes, of course the disks should be stored on an unRaid server - where else?

[fugitiveALiEN]

I can speak to the damaged or CD/DVD copying tasks once the disks are cleaned and THE best program I have found to date is ISOBuster @ http://www.smart-projects.net/isobuster/ It's been around for a while and has it's roots in forensic data retrieval. It has rescued countless CDs and DVDs of data. It also has pretty good error correction and bad sector skippage, as well as file skipping and marking of bad files in sectors where there's a scratch. One small scratch shouldn't damage an entire disc, and neither does an incomplete session! Enjoy.