Need Suggestions- how to copy data from 500 DVD's

Hi Guys,

As all of u guys I was a very enthusiastic downloader till 2-3 years back and used to download each and every movie came up...those days I used to write them in DVD's to keep them safe.

Now days I move away for projects and want to keep the movies/documentaries with me . I dont have enough time at home to copy each DVD one by one...what to do???

Any suggestions welcome

I have the space required to copy the data in HDD ...I have 320+320+1 TB+1 TB of space..may buy more space if required .

I had a plan in mind ..thats to get a 2TB external HDD..desktop one... and outsource a internet cafe to do this work..maybe he will do it easily for some money

500 is too much! :shock:

Hire your cousin/younger brother or sister to do this job. But if you have "objectionable" content on them better to hire the cafe guy. If will make sure to fill up your hdd and also fill up his own hdd with the "contents".

I also use to make DVD's before I bought 1 TB hdd for my PC (plus 500 GB for my secondary PC). But the number didn't exceed 138. Those are kept labelled and indexed in a cataloging tool.

Memories...

Borrow optical drives from all your friends and maybe one or two desktops too. Then fill up all SATA ports with optical drives and copy about a dozen DVD at a time.

Assuming all DVDs to be single layer and average transfer speed of 10 MB/s, it will take 66.85 hours to copy all disks (when coping one disk at a time).

@vyom most of them dont have anything objectionable ...just movies and doumentories ...even my all DVD are labeled and I have maintained the data on a excel sheet

...but I cant travel with those...and when i need a movie I have to redownload it again.

@harshil yes all are single layer ...your idea is good ...but I have to spend my precious free time after office for this faltu activity ...not worth

sujoyp said:
Hi Guys,

As all of u guys I was a very enthusiastic downloader till 2-3 years back and used to download each and every movie came up...those days I used to write them in DVD's to keep them safe.

Now days I move away for projects and want to keep the movies/documentaries with me . I dont have enough time at home to copy each DVD one by one...what to do???

Any suggestions welcome

I have the space required to copy the data in HDD ...I have 320+320+1 TB+1 TB of space..may buy more space if required .

I had a plan in mind ..thats to get a 2TB external HDD..desktop one... and outsource a internet cafe to do this work..maybe he will do it easily for some money

Outsource it to a cousin or someone, 2-5/- per DVD will get the job done.

sujoyp said:
@harshil yes all are single layer ...your idea is good ...but I have to spend my precious free time after office for this faltu activity ...not worth

Yes. Sure.
Transferring all your digital content that you so desirably downloaded and then bought 500 DVD's and painstakingly burned them onto those media one at a time so that you can access those anytime in the future and also share them with anybody and don't need to download again on the pathetic internet connection that is available at our place.. is... is.. faltu activity.

Sure indeed. -__-

vyom at that time I was looking for job or you can say I had lots n lots of free time...24hrs ...now I have just 7-12 in evening...and that time had to be divided in to family, pet, hobbie, TV, facebook food and what not

Yes I spent a lot of time energy money on those DVD but I can not carry them thats the problem..

@tkin ....thats what I was thinking..looking for someone to do this copying thing for me

I would do it for u if i were there, not to mention i would keep some of the contents with your permission

keeping content is not a problem at all sam .....but you have given me another good idea I guess

Make a castle out those.

sujoyp said:
keeping content is not a problem at all sam .....but you have given me another good idea I guess

i will give you an idea which you wont probably like, i would say, copy only those disks which you feel will wither very soon and the data would prove unrecoverable, for the rest, keep them in a dry cool place with the utmost care you can provide to.

Make them last and back them up 10-20 dvds a day as you see fit for your time. This is not an immediate solution. But if i were you, i would never hand my possessions to any cyber cafe or so to get the job done, I had 124 dvds and cds myself before i came here, collected through 1999-2008 with highly valued content to me.

I carefully copied every single one of them with patience, i had a very good quality drive and I handle these media with care, bit sensitive, in any case i would better leave them in piece rather give it to some clumsy cafe boy. Any data whatsoever collected by me, if lost will be lost by my hand and none other.

hmm sam but the issue will remain same...its not the problem of DVD being damaged ...its problem of convenience in using it...I came back home from a 1.5 yrs project in december ...I had to redownload soo many of my movies which I had copied in my DVD ...whats the use of those DVD sitting at my home in a dark bag..BTW I keep all DVD in those 80DVD bags ...not in DVD boxes.

it seems I have do some part myself

sujoyp said:
@vyom most of them dont have anything objectionable ...just movies and doumentories ...even my all DVD are labeled and I have maintained the data on a excel sheet ...but I cant travel with those...and when i need a movie I have to redownload it again.

@harshil yes all are single layer ...your idea is good ...but I have to spend my precious free time after office for this faltu activity ...not worth

You don't need to sit and stare at the copy progress dialog. Continue with you work/game while data is being copied.

yes harshil

ok will try some DVDs if it works

sujoyp said:
hmm sam but the issue will remain same...its not the problem of DVD being damaged ...its problem of convenience in using it...I came back home from a 1.5 yrs project in december ...I had to redownload soo many of my movies which I had copied in my DVD ...whats the use of those DVD sitting at my home in a dark bag..BTW I keep all DVD in those 80DVD bags ...not in DVD boxes.

it seems I have do some part myself

distribute the task among family members.

send your DVDs HDDs to me and i will send back all to you in a week. no kidding.

distribute the task among family members.

no way...parents would not do it

@humanbot ...thanks for help but its not possible

burn a certain amount of DVDs each day

nandu I wish I could do that...but sadly I have spent soo much time money and energy in that...I wont do that

A blu-ray writer maybe? And br disks?
I'm in the same situation with OP, but the problem is I can't fix my mind where to store it. I mean till 2010 I used to write all the movies in dvds, but since then I barely wrote anything, as I had 1.5 TB space on my desktop, and now I have a 2 TB external hard disk. If I keep copying things to the hard disks then it won't be long before I buy another 2 TB. Hmm, I'm confused. Are dvds safe? I mean can they store data for long periods, say for like 25-30 years?

@whatthefreak I dont think DVD are safe more than 10 years...some of my DVD's layer start peeling off...I can see some violet markings on DVD...2 DVD got damaged by this till now...percentage is less but still DVD gets damaged.

yesterday I started to copy data from dvd but its a slow process...wont do it myself

Cloud is the best way to store data, its cheap, and highly reliable, only if bandwidth was cheap and fast in India

tkin you are absolutely right ...cloud is good