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how much HDD space will i need


camaro_dude15

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im building my bro an htpc and he wants his movies at the press of a button he has 43,149 minutes worth of dvd's and 4,305 minutes worth of blu rays, (yes they are accurate i checked every single movie and wrote it all out by hand, it took forever, ADHD, OCD, and a lot of caffiene lol) how much space is this, roughly, i understand there may be differnces in quality, im just looking for a rule of thumb guess here, we are talking well over 400 movies here, 462 to be exact

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This is a very hard question to answer because it really depends on so many aspects that there isn't one simple rule of thumb for every movie.

The amount of space doesn't just depend on the movie length but a whole host of things including the type of encoding, the quality of the movie, the size of the music track used in a movie. etc

 

The best thing I can think of is the following vague upper bound (with plenty of assumptions!):

 

Bluray Size:

Each layer of a Bluray disk has 25 gb worth of room - I'll assume that these are the most common and the other layer would probably hold "special features" - which you don't want.

 

Assuming that we get about 2.5 hours worth of a movie on a single side of a bluray disk, 150 mins of time will use 25 gb.

 

Thus the amount of space you will need for the bluray movies would be approximately: (4,305mins)*(25gb/150mins) = 28.7*25gb = 720 gb

 

DVD Size:

Now for DVD movies I know dual layer DVD are the most common and these have 8.5-8.7 gb of space.

 

Again assuming that we get about 2.5 hours worth of movie on a dual sided DVD disk, 150 mins of time will use 8.5gb.

 

Thus the amount of space required for the DVD section would be approximately: (43149mins)*(8.7gb/150mins) = 2500 gb

 

TOTAL: 720 + 2500 = 3.3 TB.

 

This is a very rough estimate (slightly over estimated) but hopefully it will help.

 

If you want room to grow I would probably go for 3x 2TB drives or something.

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With file conversion and compression technology now-a-days, those numbers are terribly off Alex! DVD quality should be around 700MB-1GB depending on movie length. Last I checked on 1080p (Blue-Ray) they were in the 8-10GB range. But, you have to have the software to do that as well ;)

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With file conversion and compression technology now-a-days, those numbers are terribly off Alex! DVD quality should be around 700MB-1GB depending on movie length. Last I checked on 1080p (Blue-Ray) they were in the 8-10GB range. But, you have to have the software to do that as well ;)

I have no doubt they are off lol. It is based on so many assumptions its scary :P

 

Ok well given what you said then: BD requires 287 GB and DVD requires 287 GB thus total is 574 GB :P Wow my first estimate was way off... LOL

Edited by Alexandre

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I have no doubt they are off lol. It is based on so many assumptions its scary :P

 

Ok well given what you said then: BD requires 287 GB and DVD requires 287 GB thus total is 574 GB :P Wow my first estimate was way off... LOL

 

it really depends on quality, most torrented dvds are 500mb-1gb and most torrented blu-rays are about 5gb but if they are dvd(bluray) rips at full quality your 3.3tb estimate would be correct.

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it really depends on quality, most torrented dvds are 500mb-1gb and most torrented blu-rays are about 5gb but if they are dvd(bluray) rips at full quality your 3.3tb estimate would be correct.

Yeah the answer depends on a large number of factors - mind you Speedway, my 3.3 TB still fulfills its role as an upper bound - but it is still a pretty poor upper bound none the less. Could be sharpened if cam gave a bit more info on the quality of each movie.

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we want 1080p or the best we can get, standard def looks fine on a normal tube tv, but he has a 60 some odd inch plasma and it looks horrible, my first thought was to buy 3 different 2tb hard drives, and have a about a 1 tb hdd for os and have the space for the tuner card to save playback. i have no idea the quality or details on these discs, he has many many days worth of tv shows probably 15000 minutes worth out of the 43149, that he bought on dvd, and im going to assume those are not going to have the same quality or space requirements of the equal amount of movies.

 

 

my concern is the case we got him will only hold 3 hdd, or 4, if i use one of the dvd drive bays, i dont want to buy a bunch of 2tb hdd, and it not be enough, i need to know if i need to buy a few 3 tb hdd to hold all of this,

 

and i didnt even figure in any of his kids movies, those girls have probably an equally large collection as his, but we arent as worried about having them on this pc as much, im already dreading ripping all these movies, its going to take months. I think he needs a full on rack server!

 

 

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When i was buying a bigger drive than my 1.5TB, I found that 2TB was the best $/gb ratio. Not sure if it still is but the 3TB are over priced and often the 1TBs are as well. (1.5TB often trade blows with the 2TBs for best deal)

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When i was buying a bigger drive than my 1.5TB, I found that 2TB was the best $/gb ratio. Not sure if it still is but the 3TB are over priced and often the 1TBs are as well. (1.5TB often trade blows with the 2TBs for best deal)

 

 

but my problem comes into play when i want x amount of tb, to fit into x amount of hdd mounts,

the 3 tb drives dropped alot when the other manufactures started making some, but i agree they are expensive, and if they haddnt dropped i wouldnt even consider one, i would be looking at external solutions, but i cant argue with this price

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but my problem comes into play when i want x amount of tb, to fit into x amount of hdd mounts,

the 3 tb drives dropped alot when the other manufactures started making some, but i agree they are expensive, and if they haddnt dropped i wouldnt even consider one, i would be looking at external solutions, but i cant argue with this price

I can ;)

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Barracuda-3-5-Inch-Internal-ST32000542AS-Bare/dp/B0028Y4CY6

 

even cheaper than when I got it

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