CD/DVD carousel/loader/server

I have a large number of CD's and DVD's... both full of PC data, music or
movies, etc...

I was wondering if there are any reasonably priced library systems where I
could load all the disks into a carousel and have them automount onto my
file server when needed. This would let me access my data/applications when
necessary as well as play my music CDs or movie disks without having to rip
them into a PC readable format (MP3, DivX, etc.)

I guess mounting a few 200gig drives in my server could do the job, but
would involve a lot of time ripping my 300+ music CD's and 20 or so DVD's to
data files. Also, keeping track of what data had been updated since being
imported to disk so I can back it up to disc could be a nightmare.

Any suggests, etc. are appreciated!

"Noozer" wrote in message
news:UnMbc.21076$Ig.14104@pd7tw2no...
I have a large number of CD's and DVD's... both full of PC data, music or
movies, etc...

I was wondering if there are any reasonably priced library systems where I
could load all the disks into a carousel and have them automount onto my
file server when needed. This would let me access my data/applications
when
necessary as well as play my music CDs or movie disks without having to
rip
them into a PC readable format (MP3, DivX, etc.)

I guess mounting a few 200gig drives in my server could do the job, but
would involve a lot of time ripping my 300+ music CD's and 20 or so DVD's
to
data files. Also, keeping track of what data had been updated since being
imported to disk so I can back it up to disc could be a nightmare.

Any suggests, etc. are appreciated!



Rip them to hard drives. There are many good reasons for that.

1) 300+ CD / DVD autochangers are way too slow and too expensive.

2) You cannot play a DVD movie across network from a DVD drive but you can
from a hard drive. This is by design. Even if you could, only a single
client on the network would be able to play a given movie because optical
drives are just too slow for multiple accesses. Up to 6 clients can play a
movie simultaneously from a hard drive at different positions (media server
on a gigabit LAN). I know, I have it at home. Most of my files are mpeg2
recordings from digital terrestrial TV.

3) It takes less than 10 minutes to rip a DVD movie to hard drive using
DVDdecrypter. Takes on average 7.5GB per movie. Its even quicker to rip an
audio CD.

4) Once on a file server its very easy to load a selection of favourite
tracks onto a portable player or even USB flash pen with mp3 playing
capability.

5) Ideal media server needs 4 to 8 hard drives on a RAID5 or RAID10
controller. This is from experience, I recently lost the entire content of a
160GB drive.

I was wondering if there are any reasonably priced library systems where
I
could load all the disks into a carousel and have them automount onto my
file server when needed. This would let me access my data/applications
when
necessary as well as play my music CDs or movie disks without having to
rip
them into a PC readable format (MP3, DivX, etc.)

Rip them to hard drives. There are many good reasons for that.

3) It takes less than 10 minutes to rip a DVD movie to hard drive using
DVDdecrypter. Takes on average 7.5GB per movie. Its even quicker to rip an
audio CD.

DVDdecrypter? Haven't seen it but will look. Just put the disk in and hit GO
and then I have a copy on my drive? No codecs to mess with? No loss of
quality or menus, etc?

As for audio CD's, what software should I use that is this easy? I try for
128kbit-160kbit variable bit rate. Still haven't settled on how to equalize
volume between different CD's. Last time I did any audio CD ripping I used
Xing's Audio Catalyst Pro.

4) Once on a file server its very easy to load a selection of favourite
tracks onto a portable player or even USB flash pen with mp3 playing
capability.

This is OK. Only one portable here anyhow.

5) Ideal media server needs 4 to 8 hard drives on a RAID5 or RAID10
controller. This is from experience, I recently lost the entire content of
a
160GB drive.

That's the whole point of keeping the CDs and DVDs instead of moving to a
hard drive. It's not a BIG loss if the drive crashes if it only mirrors the
info on the CDs and DVD's though.

My biggest problem with HD's is that over time I will modify some of the
data and not know what exists on CD and what I need to back up onto CD. If I
use a hard drive I'll organize files by type, not by disk.

"Noozer" wrote in message
news:kfObc.21324$oR5.19236@pd7tw3no...

DVDdecrypter? Haven't seen it but will look. Just put the disk in and hit
GO
and then I have a copy on my drive? No codecs to mess with? No loss of
quality or menus, etc?


Select Mode File, select all files and a destination directory. Copies and
descrambles (deCSS) the DVD files exactly, no loss of quality whatsoever.


As for audio CD's, what software should I use that is this easy? I try for
128kbit-160kbit variable bit rate. Still haven't settled on how to
equalize
volume between different CD's. Last time I did any audio CD ripping I used
Xing's Audio Catalyst Pro.


I use CDex.


This is from experience, I recently lost the entire content of
a 160GB drive.

That's the whole point of keeping the CDs and DVDs instead of moving to a
hard drive. It's not a BIG loss if the drive crashes if it only mirrors
the
info on the CDs and DVD's though.


You can still create backups on DVDR, But IMHO SATA RAID5 or 10 is the way
to go.


My biggest problem with HD's is that over time I will modify some of the
data and not know what exists on CD and what I need to back up onto CD. If
I
use a hard drive I'll organize files by type, not by disk.



Organise your folder tree by subject. Also in every folder I create a text
file Info.txt where I keep notes for myself about the folder's content and
my intentions with it.