Storing quality content while still reasonable.

[ZFSinmylungs]

Okay, so .. I am not rich, and I want to store movies, preferably at 4k.
I have decided to go with M-Disc drives which supposedly last up to 1000 years (or more).
My question is:
How big is the difference between a ~5GiB movie, at 4k and between one that is that or lower, in 1080p?
I guess a big difference.. but what between ~16GiB, ~25GiB and ~50GiB 4k movies?

I wonder if HDR colors would still look good..

[Electronics Wizardy]

Why use a optical disk? Id just use hdds. Yea they don't last that long, but there much cheaper and easier to manage. And you have to keep checking any long term media storage anyways.

 

Why not do test encodes to see if you can tell, its depends on how much you care about quality, and the specific mode. And the codec and encode quality too.

 

But a good 5gb 4k movie can look reasonable, but really depends. 

[AbydosOne]

1 minute ago, ZFSinmylungs said:

I am not rich

1 minute ago, ZFSinmylungs said:

I have decided to go with M-Disc drives

Well those are two contradictory statements... M-Discs are horribly expensive per GB.

 

You're better off getting a few HDDs and upgrading/cycling them every couple years. Make sure you have a couple copies of everything.

[ZFSinmylungs]

@AbydosOne

I have calculated an it's 50-60% cheaper in 20 years, the discs I am going for.

@Electronics Wizardy

I don't mean to be rude, but please search what M-Disc is.. like it's like stone, not organic so it does not deteriorate nearly as fast aaand.. I already spent quite some money for the equipment and discs sooo yeah kinda too late to think over HDD-s now anyways. And if I were to be going by HDD-s - I'd be having some sort of RAID setup, with M-Discs I don't need that.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, ZFSinmylungs said:

I don't want to be rude, but please search what M-Disc is.. like it's like stone, not organic so it does not deteriorate nearly as fast aaand.. I already spent quite some money for the equipment and discs sooo yeah kinda too late to think over HDD-s now anyways. And if I were to be going by HDD-s - I'd be having some sort of RAID setup, with M-Discs I don't need that.

How much storage do you need?

 

I know what M disks are. They just aren't pratical for most personal data storage. They just don't make much sense. 

 

Why would you need raid with hdds? just get a single or few big hdds, and keep a few copies of the data. Same thing with optical disks, I wouldn't keep only one copy of the disks.

 

Are these public movies? Why keep these in their own format? just buy the blu-ray and keep that. THen 

you won't lose any quality. Those movies are also pretty easy to find normally later on as lots of people have them(and the studios have much higher quality versions too)

 

3 minutes ago, ZFSinmylungs said:

I have calculated an it's 50-60% cheaper in 20 years, the discs I am going for.

Can you show your price breakdown?

 

It looks like the disks are about $110 per TB. A Hdd les about 1/3 of that, and those 3 hdds should easily make it 20 years or more. And Id make sure to have multiple copies of these disks too.

 

Also since the disks are much smaller, they will be much more of a pain to manage, and slower to write data to.

[tkitch]

Following up on @Electronics Wizardy's post:

 

M-Disc Media:  https://www.newegg.com/p/1J2-006M-00002?Description=m-disc 100gb&cm_re=m-disc_100gb-_-1J2-006M-00002-_-Product

266$ for 2.5 TB of storage  (Or over 1600$ for 15TB of media)

 

External HDD:  https://www.newegg.com/wd-elements-14tb-black/p/N82E16822234411

270$ for 14TB of storage

 

....  that's 6 14TB HDDs for the same price as 14TB of M-Disc media.

 

And anything you get that's optical is going to be hella more annoying.  (Also, will M-Disc readers be a thing in 10-20 years?  Plenty of storage mediums, well, disappear.)

[ZFSinmylungs]

@Electronics Wizardy
I need terra-bytes.
What you're recommending with HDD-s makes no sense, which goes to show that you don't seem to know what you're talking about. Why not have 10 copies of the same data, right?!?

" Are these public movies? Why keep these in their own format? just buy the blu-ray and keep that. THen "
1. I don't know where to get them
2. I don't know how long the data would last - probably not too long.

"Can you show your price breakdown? "
Sure.
I was calculating for 16TB of actual usable data
16TB HDD = 500-600$
x2 that for redundancy, be it RAID 1 or backup
x4 that for 20 years, expecting a comfortable 5 years of warranty, I know some might last up to 7, 9, 12 years, but just to be safe.

A terra-byte of M-Disc worth of storage costs ~200$.
A terra-byte of HDD-s for 20 years and redundancy - ~480$

Not to mention, that in theory, the M-discs should last much longer than just 20 years.

[tikker]

9 minutes ago, ZFSinmylungs said:

I need terra-bytes.
What you're recommending with HDD-s makes no sense, which goes to show that you don't seem to know what you're talking about. Why not have 10 copies of the same data, right?!?

HDDs have plenty of terabytes, much more than M-Discs. Why so aggressive? I'd argue the opposite, what you are suggesting with M-Discs makes no sense, unless you are storing some super secure secret information on these discs that'll have to be guaranteed to be preserved or go in a bomb shelter for the next decades until you need to retrieve them (which for all intents and purpose can mean movies to you, that's your choice).

10 minutes ago, ZFSinmylungs said:

" Are these public movies? Why keep these in their own format? just buy the blu-ray and keep that. THen "
1. I don't know where to get them
2. I don't know how long the data would last - probably not too long.

What kind of movies are they? Normaly DVD or Blu-ray movies you can just buy, unless they're really old and/or foreign titles maybe, and once you've bought them you could rip them. Then you can just store them on a storage server and maintain that. Added bonus is you still have the original disc as back up should the server explode.

9 minutes ago, ZFSinmylungs said:

"Can you show your price breakdown? "
Sure.
I was calculating for 16TB of actual usable data
16TB HDD = 500-600$
x2 that for redundancy, be it RAID 1 or backup
x4 that for 20 years, expecting a comfortable 5 years of warranty, I know some might last up to 7, 9, 12 years, but just to be safe.

A terra-byte of M-Disc worth of storage costs ~200$.
A terra-byte of HDD-s for 20 years and redundancy - ~480$

The x4 for 20 years is rather pessimistic. It's not like your drives will instantly die once your 5 years of warranty are over. Conversely they can also die 5 minutes in. Curious to see a more elaborate breakdown of how you came to these prices.

 

I know you said you already bought the equipment, but a 16 TB WD Red costs me €499 at the moment. Another one for RAID 1 would set that at €1000. The cheapest M-Discs I found locally are €29.90 for a pack of 5 25 GB M-Disc BD-R. That's 8 packs for 1 TB, or 128 for 16 TB. It would cost me €3827.2 to store 16 TB on M-Discs, double that in order to have a backup. Even at your x4 for 20 years HDDs would be cheaper.

23 minutes ago, ZFSinmylungs said:

Not to mention, that in theory, the M-discs should last much longer than just 20 years.

Why would you need a storage medium that'll last you 1000 years for movies though? I keep a copy of all the movies I watch, but my 19 TB Unraid server is managing just fine so far, running regular old WD Reds. I'm running Unraid's RAID 5-esque config so I can suffer one drive loss should that happen.

 

1 hour ago, ZFSinmylungs said:

My question is:
How big is the difference between a ~5GiB movie, at 4k and between one that is that or lower, in 1080p?
I guess a big difference.. but what between ~16GiB, ~25GiB and ~50GiB 4k movies?

That completely depends on what compression is used and how much it is compressed. For example, at the same video quality encoded with H265 can do much better in terms of compression (and thus file size) than H264. Blu-ray rips tend to be of the order of (very roughly) 20 GB for a good 1080p one or 80 GB for a good 4k one. Bitrates usually something like 20 Mpbs and 80 Mbps for H264 stuff from memory.

 

If we're talking good, proper 4k I wouldn't touch a 5 GB one with a 10 foot pole if it's H264 encoded, same for ~1 GB 1080p ones. It'll depend on the playback device, but on a proper one those will look bad because they're compressed to hell to reach that small filesize. It's all down to your own preference of what your playback device will support and what you deem acceptable video quality.

[ZFSinmylungs]

@tikker
" HDDs have plenty of terabytes, much more than M-Discs. Why so aggressive? I'd argue the opposite, what you are suggesting with M-Discs makes no sense, unless you are storing some super secure secret information on these discs that'll have to be guaranteed to be preserved or go in a bomb shelter for the next decades until you need to retrieve them (which for all intents and purpose can mean movies to you, that's your choice). "
I love when people answer their own questions xD.

"What kind of movies are they? Normaly DVD or Blu-ray movies you can just buy, unless they're really old and/or foreign titles maybe, and once you've bought them you could rip them. Then you can just store them on a storage server and maintain that. Added bonus is you still have the original disc as back up should the server explode. "
Again - not cost-efficient nor long-term storage.

" The x4 for 20 years is rather pessimistic. It's not like your drives will instantly die once your 5 years of warranty are over. Conversely they can also die 5 minutes in. Curious to see a more elaborate breakdown of how you came to these prices.

I know you said you already bought the equipment, but a 16 TB WD Red costs me €499 at the moment. Another one for RAID 1 would set that at €1000. The cheapest M-Discs I found locally are €29.90 for a pack of 5 25 GB M-Disc BD-R. That's 8 packs for 1 TB, or 128 for 16 TB. It would cost me €3827.2 to store 16 TB on M-Discs, double that in order to have a backup. Even at your x4 for 20 years HDDs would be cheaper. "

I did say just to be safe, did I fucking not? I know that warranty does not necessarily mean death after that, but some devices are made to die on you after that period :d sadly.
Yeah dude I know, but the point is that I cannot afford me that much money - 1000$ at once. With M-Discs or any CD-s in fact - you can just pay little by little with time :) flexibility man.

"Even at your x4 for 20 years HDDs would be cheaper."
Impossible

How more detailed can I be?!?
I told you.. you forgot to add the x4 for 20 years total(or more) - fuck it - even if it lasts up to 30 years - the balance for M-Discs will remain the same.
So that's $4000 of HDD-s, not to mention also hassle with re-silvering everything or moving it, much much more effort and time after every disk failure and such.

I am done talking about this, dude, this is NOT the topic of this post, but I went this far to make sure we understand where we're at.

Edit:
I forgot to read the rest of your reply..
Yeah fuck man but you haven't reaaaally answered my question...
Say that the movies were encoded with H265.. what file-size would you recommend? Under 50GB, of course..
Like TV-Shows... if I put a single episode on one disc, that will cost me ~200$ JUST FOR ONE SHOW... I can not afford that :d I hope you understand.

Edited August 21, 2021 by ZFSinmylungs
dummy

[tikker]

2 hours ago, ZFSinmylungs said:

I love when people answer their own questions xD.

That's fine, but since you said I'm not rich" that's why the questions about why M-Discs were your choice, given that they seem to be around three times as expensive as a HDD solution.

2 hours ago, ZFSinmylungs said:

Yeah dude I know, but the point is that I cannot afford me that much money - 1000$ at once. With M-Discs or any CD-s in fact - you can just pay little by little with time flexibility man.

You don't have to buy it all at once. I mentioned my Unraid server at currently 19 TB. I didn't buy that all at once, I started with 2x 4 TB (to be able to use the redundancy). Then over the years I slowly added a new 4 TB drive whenever it filled up.

2 hours ago, ZFSinmylungs said:

Impossible

Two people in this thread have shown pricing , with links to currently sold products, proving the M-Disc solution is way more expensive than the HDD solution.

2 hours ago, ZFSinmylungs said:

How more detailed can I be?!?
I told you.. you forgot to add the x4 for 20 years total(or more) - fuck it - even if it lasts up to 30 years - the balance for M-Discs will remain the same.
So that's $4000 of HDD-s, not to mention also hassle with re-silvering everything or moving it, much much more effort and time after every disk failure and such.

Honestly you aren't very detailed at all. You haven't answered what kind of movies you are storing nor do you even know how you are going to obtain them, i.e. you don't even have anything to store in the first place.

 

I think the x4 for 20 years is unrealistic if it's just cold storage. That $4000 will get you a RAID1 protected HDD setup. The M-Disc solution would cost you $4476 (converted from my euro price) without a backup. To get the RAID 1 ish equivalent (I know RAID 1 is not a backup), so a copy of each disc, you'll be spending $8952 on M-Discs. Over 20 years that's $200 per year for HDDs vs $448 for M-Discs.

 

This is not a strange comparison. Since you are so afraid of data loss or corruption, you should also be worried about your M-Disc writing wrongly, failing prematurely or getting damaged in storage due to improper handling, because that 1000 years is only "when properly stored".

 

As you are looking at terabytes of movies, to save cost I would only store those that are likely to be extremely hard to reacquire on them (e.g. those exotic or foreign movies) and not things like the Marvel movies.

2 hours ago, ZFSinmylungs said:

Like TV-Shows... if I put a single episode on one disc, that will cost me ~200$ JUST FOR ONE SHOW... I can not afford that :d I hope you understand.

Which is exactly why people are saying M-Discs are not a cost-effective solution for what you want to do. You say you don't have money, yet go for the more expensive solution. Maybe you want to keep it around for your family or future generations, but unfortunately this will come at a monetary cost.

2 hours ago, ZFSinmylungs said:

Say that the movies were encoded with H265.. what file-size would you recommend? Under 50GB, of course..

There is no single number. Bitrate ultimately determines file size. I've generally found 30-50 GB H265 4k blu-rays to be good quality to my eyes though, as H265 can do with something like ~50% lower bit rate as a rough rule of thumb.

[ZFSinmylungs]

@tikker
" That's fine, but since you said I'm not rich" that's why the questions about why M-Discs were your choice, given that they seem to be around three times as expensive as a HDD solution."
God dammit dude, this is the 3rd time me repeating myself: THINK IN TWENTY YEARS TIME(or more)!!
Why do you keep on repeating the same answer? Of course a 1 on 1 - HDD-s are cheaper... for one-time thing, not for x4 like I have said. now.. I said 20 years, which can be 30 or 40 - the minimum is the minimum, the maximum doesn't matter, I have counted the minimum.

"You don't have to buy it all at once. I mentioned my Unraid server at currently 19 TB. I didn't buy that all at once, I started with 2x 4 TB (to be able to use the redundancy). Then over the years I slowly added a new 4 TB drive whenever it filled up. "
I know, dude.
But I don't have space for that.. I planned on buying a server for the HDD-s but I just cannot. no room, cannot have noise, just no. Maybe in the future, when HDD-s get cheaper or something.

"Two people in this thread have shown pricing , with links to currently sold products, proving the M-Disc solution is way more expensive than the HDD solution."
And I have pointed to where they failed in their calculation, yes. You cannot calculate something if you only take a few given variables, and not all of them, like I said - you didn't multiply it by 4, for the minimum of 20 years. Can you even fucking read?

"I think the x4 for 20 years is unrealistic if it's just cold storage. That $4000 will get you a RAID1 protected HDD setup. The M-Disc solution would cost you $4476 (converted from my euro price) without a backup. To get the RAID 1 ish equivalent (I know RAID 1 is not a backup), so a copy of each disc, you'll be spending $8952 on M-Discs. Over 20 years that's $200 per year for HDDs vs $448 for M-Discs. "
M-Discs don't need backup.
Sure - they can get scratched, but I won't be giving them off to kids nor keeping them on dust.
And even if one or two do fail - I won't lose terra-bytes worth of data, I'll lose just 25GB.

" Which is exactly why people are saying M-Discs are not a cost-effective solution for what you want to do. You say you don't have money, yet go for the more expensive solution. Maybe you want to keep it around for your family or future generations, but unfortunately this will come at a monetary cost. "
Learn to read, please... If you cannot make a simple calculation, then this statement is worthless.
I have re-calculated everything 3 times, because guess what - I don't got much money and I planned this for a year, perhaps ever more.

"I've generally found 30-50 GB H265 4k blu-rays to be good quality to my eyes though"
I guess I should lie in my bed and cry then.. because that is impossible :d so expensive

[SansVarnic]

-= Locked =-

 

@ZFSinmylungs

Looks like you made up your mind in your op and are looking to justify said decision. Picking a fight with the community to satisfy your need to spend an unnecessary and exorbitant amount of money on a system even though you make the following claim:

20 hours ago, ZFSinmylungs said:

Okay, so .. I am not rich,

 

If you want to save and spend on a system you obvious want this badly, then do what you want for you, save and spend the money.

But don't come in here and try to justify something when it's clear what you are doing. 

Other members have given you insight to your logic and if you cannot accept that...move on. We do not encourage topics that do not contribute to the community but add discourse.

 

If you have questions, PM me and I would be happy to explain in greater detail.

 

Lastly please learn how to use the Quote and Tag System correctly.

 

@zfssinmylungs   = not correct

@ZFSinmylungs = correct

 

"ok,so .. Iam not rich"  = not correct

20 hours ago, ZFSinmylungs said:

Okay, so .. I am not rich,

= correct.

 

Edited August 21, 2021 by SansVarnic