Managing Storage for JAV

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lock_on

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Jan 22, 2023
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How do you guys store your JAV? How do you manage them? There are always updated jav in each week, how do you recommend for storing those JAV files?
I mainly store my JAV in external harddrive, but because there are too many files, they cannot fit in one harddrive. I use few external harddrives to store them but It's difficult when trying to search for a certain jav. The harddrive itself contain many other files not only jav and when the drive is full I just buy a new one. That's why managing these files are quite hard.
Do you guys have suggestion for this?
 
Instead of buying more external hard-drives, you should save up for a NAS like a Synlogy DS925+ (or something bigger, depending on your storage needs or being more future proof) and X hard-drives. For example if you buy 4x12 TB you would have 22TB available with RAID 10 or 32TB if you go for RAID5 (not recommended). But DS925+ + 4x12 TB drives would cost you roughly $2000.

How much storage do you currently have?
 
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I have consider configuring NAS for this last months, but it is quite expensive to build one considering my external harddrives are portable one. I search about turning or converting those drives to NAS, but there are no result about that. My storage is around 10TB in total split arround 6-7 external drives. In using NAS, that means I have to buy complete NAS drives like you mentioned, but the external drives I have will be useless unless they are to be sold.
 
I genuinely believe that a NAS is the most sustainable long-term fix for you. With a NAS you aggregate all your files into one place, accessible over your home network. No more guessing which external drive has the file you are looking for. You could even integrate media servers (e.g., Plex, Jellyfin, Emby) for browsing, cataloging and playing/consuming your collection. Additionally you can access files from any device (PC, phone, TV) without physical connections in your home network.

You can also start "slow" by just buying a NAS and a big drive (e.g. 12 TB) and don't use RAID. Without RAID, your files are at the same risk level as they are now on a single external drive.

Either sell 2-3 portables to offset the NAS cost or repurpose them as backup/archive drives.
 
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Avoid Synology, they are moving away from consumer/prosumer market by only supporting their own brand proprietary hard drives on their new models.

Look at QNAP at the higher end or Ugreen on the lower end.
 
periph said:
Avoid Synology, they are moving away from consumer/prosumer market by only supporting their own brand proprietary hard drives on their new models.
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Yeah, I've read that just this week. That's a big no for me.
 
I currently use a 14TB and 20TB external hard drives to store, currently, 5,400 movies. I still have ample storage space on the 20 so I'm thinking that I should purge at some point. I use JavLuv for organizing and it's great. Yes, I would be sad if one of the drives crapped out but then I'd just have to find more Jav, right?
 
Not2srius said:
I currently use a 14TB and 20TB external hard drives to store, currently, 5,400 movies. I still have ample storage space on the 20 so I'm thinking that I should purge at some point. I use JavLuv for organizing and it's great. Yes, I would be sad if one of the drives crapped out but then I'd just have to find more Jav, right?
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I also back up my truly important JAV to cloud storage. The reality is, I couldn’t re-download my entire collection if I tried. Over the years I’ve gathered rare titles, some paid for, others effectively lost to time, that would vanish forever in a catastrophe. RAID protects against drive failures, but it’s useless against mostly anything else. (https://www.raidisnotabackup.com/)

Losing those irreplaceable titles? Some couldn’t be rebought at all. Others… well, I’d rather not spend hundreds hunting them down again.I wish I could shrug off losing 10TB of this library.
 
I'm also using Javluv to organize my collection, but because my movies are scattered around different drives, I have difficulty if I want to play certain movie. I need to search it depending on the directory I saved before, then connect the corresponding drive to play it. It's quite troublesome.
 
IdeNali said:
I also back up my truly important JAV to cloud storage. The reality is, I couldn’t re-download my entire collection if I tried. Over the years I’ve gathered rare titles, some paid for, others effectively lost to time, that would vanish forever in a catastrophe. RAID protects against drive failures, but it’s useless against mostly anything else. (https://www.raidisnotabackup.com/)

Losing those irreplaceable titles? Some couldn’t be rebought at all. Others… well, I’d rather not spend hundreds hunting them down again.I wish I could shrug off losing 10TB of this library.
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I know the basic about RAID, but I don't thing I need that, this collection is not that important to be backed up with RAID. It will hurt if the collection is gone, but not that will make me desperate about that. Last year, even I had 1 of my 2TB external drive busted out of nowhere, it cannot detect at all on my PC.
 
I'm fine with storing my files on currently 7 external HDD, 4 TB each. I have organised them alphabetical (A-D, E-G, etc.) according to the film-numbers given from the companies. So I always knew, where to find a film. Hentai and uncensoed stuff are on a separate HDD.
 
pogo1stick said:
I'm fine with storing my files on currently 7 external HDD, 4 TB each. I have organised them alphabetical (A-D, E-G, etc.) according to the film-numbers given from the companies. So I always knew, where to find a film. Hentai and uncensoed stuff are on a separate HDD.
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So you are keeping free storage on each drives to accomodate new movies? What if someday the A-D drive is full, and then new A series release bunch of movies? How will you manage that?
 
There are also external enclosures that can take a bunch of drives, but not combine them into a RAID. This is call JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) and they all mount separately but can be attached at the same time. This could help with the multiple drive situation describe by a few of you. It has the same risk factor as the separate externals since if one drive dies then there's no mitigation like with RAID (even though, yes, RAID is not a backup)

You could also get a USB hub and attach multiple external drives to do approximately the same thing. You'll need to be using external drives that each have their own power supply (this will be the case for most 3.5" desktop external drives) or a hub that has a separate power supply to power the drives if they depend on usb power (this will be for 2.5" portable external drives). If SSD externals, they likely use less power so they may be able to just use bus power.
 
periph said:
There are also external enclosures that can take a bunch of drives, but not combine them into a RAID. This is call JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) and they all mount separately but can be attached at the same time. This could help with the multiple drive situation describe by a few of you. It has the same risk factor as the separate externals since if one drive dies then there's no mitigation like with RAID (even though, yes, RAID is not a backup)

You could also get a USB hub and attach multiple external drives to do approximately the same thing. You'll need to be using external drives that each have their own power supply (this will be the case for most 3.5" desktop external drives) or a hub that has a separate power supply to power the drives if they depend on usb power (this will be for 2.5" portable external drives). If SSD externals, they likely use less power so they may be able to just use bus power.
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I have used USB Hub with 4 port of USBs (with external power), It was fine when I connect 4 of my external drives. But after few minutes using those drives, I noticed some clicking noise that shouldn't be happening, so I stopped using that. I don't think using USB hub for long term is a good solution. I don't know about this JBOD, if the working principle is the same as hub, I don't think the lifetime of the drives will be long. It's just my opinion because I have never used it.
 
lock_on said:
So you are keeping free storage on each drives to accomodate new movies? What if someday the A-D drive is full, and then new A series release bunch of movies? How will you manage that?
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If that is the case, i buy a new hdd and split the former collection. It is then, for example, hdd with "a" and hdd with "b-c".
 
lock_on said:
I have used USB Hub with 4 port of USBs (with external power), It was fine when I connect 4 of my external drives. But after few minutes using those drives, I noticed some clicking noise that shouldn't be happening, so I stopped using that. I don't think using USB hub for long term is a good solution. I don't know about this JBOD, if the working principle is the same as hub, I don't think the lifetime of the drives will be long. It's just my opinion because I have never used it.
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The risk with the hub approach like you experienced is that it is hard to manage the power draw between all the drives connected to the hub. Even if the hub has external power, you'll have to look at its specs to see how much power it can provide to each port and if it can provide max power to all ports simultaneously. So it's risky but like I pointed out, it's better to use drives that have their own plug-in power supply if you want to try doing this. In practices, that means using full size 3.5" hard disk desktop hard drives. The smaller portable 2.5" hard drives/ssd's generally do no have external power at all.

This isn't a factor in JBOD because it has it's own dedicated power supply that has be sized correctly to support the number of drives in the enclosure. So your comparison isn't really applicable. I only pointed out that it is similar in concept, but the hub method is hacked together with no real verification that it will be safe verse the JBOD enclosure is designed specifically for that. Sort of like, if you need to move a bunch of people somewhere, sure, you could stuff 20 people into a minivan and maybe could get by, but it's likely it would be over weight and collapse the suspension or flip over on a turn and not all the people would have seatbelts; or you could get a properly designed and made full-size bus.

Example JBOD enclosure: https://www.amazon.com/Bay-Enclosure-Supports-Capacity-Tool-Free/dp/B0DD3GQ6NR
 
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