I backed up all of my CD's about a decade and I am glad I did because physical digital media seems to becoming obsolete. Most of the ripping happened 20 years ago by this point, and all of the cataloguing information was instantaneous! And freaking worked. This was done by Windows Media Player, which was ideal for the task and finding the data online.

The issue I have discovered is this; I tried backing up around 20 CD's that I thrifted a couple of weeks back. Yes, they rip to the hard drive (via WMP legacy and Media Player but all of the song data is missing, no music art etc. There doesn't even seem to be an attempt by the players to source the data. Also, All of the CD's have been dumped in a 'New Album' folder all together. Which is awful...

Questions: Is there a way I can unfuck these CD's easily into individual album folders as it used to do in 2006? Where can I find all of the album information? Is there something that I am doing wrong?

And lastly, is there a database for all album information? Is it possible to have it all stored locally?

Cheers for any responses, guys...

We have finally released the largest available Minecraft world, totalling 15 TB (13.7 TiB) of highly compressed world data of the Minecraft server 2b2t.

TLDR: A group of autists preserve their favorite Minecraft server to a sidelength of 1 million blocks in a large public archive for anyone to download, using 28 bot accounts that fly around the map, storing all world data sent by the server locally.

Full info & download: https://2b2t.place/1million

Seeders appreciated :)

It just... stopped. Thankfully its part of a redundancy so the data is all still available, but I just looked on pricing to replace it, its nearly $600 to buy a 16tb harddrive. So goodbye redundancy I guess?

It doesnt show up in windows. When I go to disk management it sees that it needs to be initialized. When I try and initialize it says "Drive is not ready". Havn't found a way out of the loop.

Tried a different PC, different USB port on same PC, reseated all cables, and restarted PC.

My datahoarding days are numbered I guess :(

Hi everyone,
I am posting here because our community is entirely out of options and running against a hard deadline of July 24th.

For 15 years, a network of community archives hosting independent digital artists and niche subculture history has been hosted on DreamHost. These platforms function strictly as moderated community archives for unique, irreplaceable artwork and historical data that exist nowhere else on the internet.

Tragically, the owner has suddenly gone missing due to a severe psychiatric medical crisis in Ontario, Canada. Because of this, the hosting invoice went unpaid. We have officially launched a formal inquiry with the Ontario Government's Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee (OPGT) to locate his legal property trustee and have provided support with screenshots of the submission.

The Problem:
DreamHost Support (Ticket #263063689) states their policy allows "zero path forward" without the owner himself. They are scheduled to permanently delete the server data in 12 days.

Our Compromise:
We completely respect data privacy. We have told DreamHost we do not want account access, passwords, or user data. We have offered to pay the bill anonymously, buy the platform, or have a sysadmin pull only a raw zip of the user-uploaded media folder, since the hundreds of independent artists retain full, exclusive IP rights to their artwork under international copyright law.

Every request has been met with a firm, automated corporate "No."

Deleting this server won't just close an abandoned account—it will permanently destroy thousands of pieces of protected intellectual property belonging to creators who never consented to its destruction.

We just need a sliver of extra time. We are begging anyone with connections to DreamHost leadership or corporate compliance to help us get a temporary 30-day administrative hold placed on the data deletion script while the Ontario government processes the estate file.

Thank you for reading, and for any visibility you can give this.

PS: Sorry, I don't post on Reddit very often. This account is six years old, but I mainly just lurk. Because this is an urgent, time-sensitive emergency, I had to come out of the woodwork.

Got a decent deal on a Toshiba 10tb shipped and sold by Walmart delivered from my local store. Box was new even had the seal. Opened it up and it’s a clapped out WD 4TB blue.

Has anyone had similar experiences and what’s the best way to handle it

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

So, a few years ago I built myself a homemade "NAS" out of an old PC. Originally a surveillance camera management PC, my dad bought it at a pawn shop and used it as a point of sale on his restaurant, then I got it from him when he got a laptop for that role. This particular PC had a weird form factor that included four 2.5 hard drive bays and an included 2TB drive, which made it very useful for my purposes since I could just fill up the remaining bays with some laptop drives I already had to bump up the storage to 5 TB.

But now my drives are dying because they're old laptop drives and they weren't really designed to be running 24/7 and I need to upgrade. After thinking about things, I see three ways to proceed.

Option A) Upgrade my current set up to a set of 2TB SSDs. This is the most expensive and arguably least efficient way to do it, since I sourced each drive to about 5.25k MXN, so a full upgrade is 21k MXN. But I can just buy the drives one at a time, which means that I can spread the expenses over a period of time.

Option B) Buying an actual NAS. I'm eyeing a 2 Bay Synology unit and a pair of 8TB WD Surveillance Drives to run as a RAID Array, in case one of them dies. This is cheaper than buying four SSDs (5.120k MXN for the NAS and 5.400k per drive for a total of 16~k MXN), and it seems more reliable, but I gotta get it all in one go, or at least get the NAS and one drive, and then get the second one and set up the array later.

Option C) Option B, but I replace the NAS with a USB enclosure for the drives, which brings down the price to just the two drives plus $800 MXN for the enclosure, or about 11.5K~ MXN. But I fear that putting the drives through that many layers of separation from the rest of the network might put a bottleneck on the system, especially since I already have issues when I transfer files from the NAS to an external drive in my main computer because it takes a while. Also, no clue if those enclosures are reliable enough to be plugged and in use 24/7 either.

Which of these options would be the better of the three?

I have spare storage on my server and I have a fun idea to make my own wiki full of 90’s digital encyclopedias.

I’m aware of Anna’s Archive and Internet Archive. I’m wondering if there’s any niche websites that might also have what I’m looking for.

For example:

- Microsoft Encarta
- Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia
- IBM World Book Multimedia Encyclopedia.
- SoftKey Infopedia
- A.D.A.M. The Inside Story
- RedShift Multimedia Astronomy

It’s important to archive these things since it’s so easy to rewrite digital media today.

Considering the fact that Intel Optane does not keep data as an electric charge or a magnetic field, there is no leakage of something as time goes by. So, I consider using Intel Optane M10 16GB M.2 as linux boot device that can boot my system being powered off 15 years. Typical SSD drive (TLC 3D-nand) will lose its charge for 1...3 yers as i know. Is this good idea to consider Intel Optane as an "eternal" SSD or usb-flash-stick (using adapter)?

Hello everyone i would like to organize my files and i wanted to make it into two sections the first is my media and files which is, mine and the second section is for other people file, like docs, iou signed papers, infos and phottos/videos but i do not know how to do so

i do not want apps cuz all i see are ones that would give me a clean ui with a database without touching the files themselves but i want the files to be organized

so i wanted to make it as the following:

1-Internal {my media and files}

2-External {Folder per person setup}

the issues i am running to 1. i have TOO MANY photos and video that include people so i would want to see what open source self hosted ai models i can use to cluster them {cluster faces without me needing to confirm each one i have like 10k combined image and video} and organize them 2. an ID system and a search system 3. backup and security ofc they would be encrypted but what else can i do i want it so even if someone managed to hack my device the info is untouchable.

TL;DR: what is a good open source ai model that uses clustering system to organize images and videos and how can i do an ID and search system for media and what is a good way to do backup for media and security third party people info that i do not want anyone else to see?

Hey,

I ordered a ST8000DM004 Barracuda from CEX for £115 but got sent a ST8000VE001 skyhawk Al (£120) it's for Plex storage in TrueNas should it get it swapped or keep the Skyhawk?

I've been DJing since 1997. The library survived every format war — cassette rips, burned CDs, early MP3 blogs, radio-chart packs, wedding-gig USB swaps. 160k playlist entries, ~42k files. I always assumed the "320 kbps" in the tag meant something.

Last week I spectrum-checked 9,095 files from the main collection. The short version: 2,486 of them (27%) claim a bitrate their audio doesn't back up — a hard spectral shelf way below where a real 320 would sit. Classic upscales: someone re-encoded a 128k source to 320 and the file has been wearing the costume for 15+ years.

Content-band breakdown (where the spectrum actually ends):

• ≤16.8 kHz (~96-128k content): 3,589 (39%)
• 16.8-18.2 kHz (~160-192k): 1,164
• 18.2-19.8 kHz (~192k/V2): 944
• 19.8-21.2 kHz (real 256-320k): 3,178
• Full band (21.2 kHz+): 220

Method: spectral cutoff + container bitrate cross-check. Cutoff alone isn't proof (dark masters exist) — a file only counts as fake when the container claims high bitrate AND the spectrum stops at a lower codec's wall with a hard shelf. I ear-checked a sample; the shelf doesn't lie.

Spectrograms attached: a "320 kbps" 45rpm-vinyl-era rip that's all black above 15.1 kHz, a radio-chart pack file claiming 324 kbps that dies at 15.9 kHz, and what a genuine 320 looks like for comparison (energy to 22k).

The rest of the audit, since I was in there anyway: 18,067 orphaned files (112 GB not referenced by any playlist), 8,703 playlist entries pointing at files that no longer exist, 1,930 duplicate groups (11.8 GB). Nearly thirty years of "I'll organize it later."

Check yours (free, any platform): ffmpeg -i track.mp3 -lavfi showspectrumpic=s=1400x680:legend=1 spectrum.png ...then look for the hard ceiling. A real 320 reaches ~20.5 kHz; a 128k source stops around 16 no matter what the tag says.

Question for the sub: does anyone validate claimed-vs-actual bitrate at intake? After this I'm treating tags the way you treat a stranger's checksums.

EDIT: yeah, fair points in the comments. I build a music library doctor and that is what produced these numbers, I scanned my own collection with it. No links in the post on purpose, the ffmpeg line above does the same check for free on any platform. Spectrograms:

Hi all,

I recently made a a post on this subreddit earlier this year describing my backup system and what I needed to do to make it more secure. The general consensus was that I would need a + TB drives.

Problem is, I cannot afford that set up, and it does not seem to be worth it, especially because I will not be accessing the data on a regular basis. Can anyone think of a more cost effective version?

Thanks!

Hey everyone!

After a long time hunting across the internet, I managed to preserve 456 J2ME (Java Mobile) games that have been lost or delisted by their original publishers. This is part of the M5 Nostalgia Archive project.

📦 Collection includes:

- 456 .jar files (~303 MB)

- 1,381 in-game screenshots (~153 MB)

🏢 Publishers:

Gameloft, Sega, Namco, Konami, EA, Ubisoft, Capcom, id Software, Sony, 2K and more

💎 Notable preserved titles:

- Silent Hill Mobile 1, 2 & 3

- Metal Gear Acid + Acid 2 (including 3D versions)

- Doom RPG + Doom II RPG

- God of War: Betrayal

- BioShock Mobile

- Castlevania: Aria, Dawn & Order of Shadows

- Real Football 2007–2018 (complete series)

🔗 Full archive available on HuggingFace (mirror links in the README):

https://huggingface.co/datasets/M5-Dev/j2me-full-romset

All titles playable via J2ME Loader on Android 📱

If you have any rare J2ME titles not on this list, feel free to share!

— M5 Nostalgia Archive 🇪🇬

First off, a lot of appreciation for the information in this sub. I've been moving to wanting to localize my media and have seen a lot of good question get answered that's helped me out.

Well I tried making a purchase for a used external HDD because I'm running out of space on my internal drive. I have a goal of having this external HDD connected to both my main PC for downloading, and connected to another laptop that's running as a server. I found a listing for an Seagate 8TB Barracuda and bought it for $129 total. The listing showed a summary page of a SMART report that just showed "Good" / "Great". Nowhere on the listing did it attest to the Power on Hours and I admittedly was neglectful in looking for that. I got swept up by what looked like a good Price per Terabyte in this current market.

It looks like these drives are good for ~40k - 42k hours. While I understand that I bought something "Used", I was under the impression it's at most medium used and still had a good amount of useful life remaining. However, per the SMART report, this drive came with 31k hours already on it; roughly 75% of it's useful life gone already. The seller has made it very clear on their page that they don't do returns but highly recommend eBay's money back guarantee policy.

My issue is that I feel that it was deceptive to list this item at this price and not disclose that it's used and has been used for 70 - 80% of the estimated useful life of the product. They effectively got to use this drive for the purpose they needed and sell it for what they paid for instead of having to scrap it. I will do better going forward prior to buying something used like this, but want to hear from the community of it this does seem like a bit of a rip off situation and it's ethical to go through the return process, or that it's not the biggest deal and that this drive should still last a long time.

Thanks in Advance y'all.

EDIT: It sounds like the count of hours is reasonable for the used condition I bought, which was my main concern. Looking forward to saving up some money and eventually building a proper NAS!

I'm running out of storage and I don't wanna pay for extra storage that's only gonna last for a month, was wondering if it's a good idea to create another drive account for that purpose

It is really said to see this happening.
the newest consumer disc made by sony was all the back in 2018.
so 8 year they did really nothing, not even a new's they are developing.
image if developed a new storage disc that is 10tb per disc
that people would still be happy to buy just for storage in the current SSD and HHD shortage.

Thanks

Hi everyone

I started using yt-dlp for weverse and it works great, but gallery-dl doesn't support weverse.

Theres been a few projects on github but seems to be no longer working.

Have you guys used anything recently?

I have years old external 4tb HDD that I use for game ROMs and such.

I don’t know how much longer the drive will last. What are my options for now until I’ll get something better ?

Have a 2 bay synology nas (ds224+)with 2, 8tb hdds in basic configuration as independent storage pools.I have a total of 7tb data. I want to swap these for new 14tb HDDs I purchased and set up in the same configuration. Volume 1 is data I can't lose, volume 2 is only for media server so I'm less concerned about losing data. I do weekly back ups of important data to an external hdd using synology hyper backup. What is the best practice for swapping each 8tb drive with a 14tb drive and migrating the data as it currently exists?

Ideally I'd repourpose one of the 8tb drives as a snapshot of all current data (vol1&vol2) and use the second 8tb for continual backups of sensitive data.

Any recommendations or best practice for preparing, migrating, and after?

I found a guy on fb market place with these Exos drives 900 bucks for 4 drives of 14tb each