How do you store your porn?

[jackthetreacleeater]

I'm curious as to how porn consumers approach this issue? I used to buy a ton of DVD's from various studios and have a vast collection. This for me is a relatively safe and long-term storage medium. Now I only subscribe to Legal Porno and Brazzers as far as porn goes, and I haven't bought a DVD in quite a while.
If you only watch porn on streaming websites, do you totally rely on the scenes you've purchased always being available to watch online from your provider?
Do you download all the scenes you purchase? If so, what kind of storage medium do you use: device hard-drive, external hard-drives, optical discs, Network Attached Storage, Cloud storage, personal server?
How much porn do you have stored and do you back it up?

I have a 4 TB hard-drive in my desk-top which is basically almost full of porn from other websites I've purchased scenes from. I only have a few of my LP scenes downloaded. I own in total 906 scenes, which according to my member info accounts for 1.64 TB of scenes. I am often slightly nervous of GTFLIX TV going bust when day and my extensive paid for LP porn library disappearing into the ether. Also one hears stories on here (confirmed or unconfirmed I cannot say) of scenes one might have purchased previously subsequently being yanked and disappearing from one's library.

Let me know your thoughts.

[Ultra-Gape]

I store porn on hard-drives, with a primary and backup copy of everything important. I have something like 30-50 original porn DVDs in a box but realistically it's getting increasingly unlikely I'll ever watch any of them again (and actually I have some I've never watched).

For Pornbox content I only download scenes when I actually want to watch them though.

[PornoManiac]

I have 15 full of LP videos WD my passport 5 tb and next two 5 Tb free...plus 5 tb disk for LP pictures and screenshots

[tibor99]

I've been using a 6TB SanDisk G-DRIVE PRO

But! As you might be aware, hard drives degrade over time and are vulnerable to all kinds of damage and data loss.

So, I am thinking about the following:
- Mirroring to a second disk
- Keeping a parity archive (PAR, see: wikipedia for 'Parchive' ) for each video
- Backing up to Amazon AWS S3 long-term storage

Amazon storage can cost as little as $0.99/TB per month. It is easy to use, you don't need to be a programmer, and it will be safely stored for as long as you pay for the storage. That is pretty cheap when you start looking at RAID arrays and things like that.

I can explain in detail if anyone is interested.

Cheers, Tibor

[Ultra-Gape]

Amazon storage can cost as little as $0.99/TB per month.

Are you referring to Amazon Drive? I just had a look out of curiosity and saw this service will be closing on 31 December 2023.

[jackthetreacleeater]

Thanks for your contributions. I think I've got a vast porn collection compared to some. I estimate I've got 597 DVD's! At an average of four scenes per DVD, that's about 2388 scenes!
I did purchase a NAS some time ago, with two 10 TB drives. I had an ambition of making it a media/porn server. I never got around to utilising it properly though. Despite only a couple of years service, both the Seagate Ironwolf drives died at virtually the same time. This created real issues for me as it killed the RAID and replacing one drive wasn't enough. In hindsight I should have started with smaller drives and expanded into the other bays at a later date. I'd rather have NAS SSD's next time. I'm very weary of RAID now, as it failed me, and as some experts say; it's not a replacement for a back-up strategy.

[dap-addict]

Just bought two external hard disks at 2TB again.
Didnt download for a good while and relay entirely on streaming, but for security reasons I shall now start downloading my best scenes again.
Buying small hard disks I hope I can reduce the risk; if I loose 500 downloaded scenes its only so many lost and not my whole library of over 5000.

[Sweep11]

Interesting topic now that I’ve finally realised my stored scenes on PB are NOT safe (all purchased GGG scenes deleted for ALL customers. No refund, no warning, no response from support.)
To say I’m angry is an understatement.
Time to finally protect my investment from these online thieves.

[netzerkaiser]

The good news is theres usually a way to retrieve a situation.

I bought this ACRONIS software that fixed a Buffalo drive (500 MB) for me about 9 years ago like magic. Still on my XP machine, licence still good. But right now I'm dealing with an external HDD, I'd prefer call it external SSD as its so small & compact... its a problem with bad sectors but I'll get around it surely.

I also salvaged a beloved "Czech pornstar chronological assemblage" external more recent Toshiba HDD (about 2GB) by replacing the removable RAID controller with an old Buffalo one. I simply almost cried when it worked.

Keep the faith.

[Visionary_sight]

Just bought two external hard disks at 2TB again.
Didnt download for a good while and relay entirely on streaming, but for security reasons I shall now start downloading my best scenes again.
Buying small hard disks I hope I can reduce the risk; if I loose 500 downloaded scenes its only so many lost and not my whole library of over 5000.

That makes total sense. If you store big. You will lose big. Store small - lose less.

Tried an ssd - the company was from amazon - initially seemed pretty normal - but after a few days I lost everything that was downloaded. After this I went back to HDD - I have one from 2012 and it still works. Massive distrust with SSDs from now on. It says Solid State is meant to be a more long lasting drive than a HDD. But in my case - that holds no truth. Maybe I haven't explore them well enough. However the drive from 2012 was the first ever HDD I have purchased and it still works. Whereas with this SSD that initial impression has gone.

[jackthetreacleeater]

I got my first desktop PC in '96, and ever since then I've built my own systems. My memory is somewhat hazy, but I don't think I've ever had a mechanical hard-drive fail on me. I've been through a hell of a lot of hard-drives in my time, but only through wanting to upgrade in capacity. The only mechanical hard-drives I've had "fail" on me are the Seagate Iron Wolves I got for my NAS. I use inverted commas because they're still working and my NAS is still going, but my NAS reports them as having failed and having SMART errors. I'm skeptical as to whether anything is really wrong with them, and whether it's just the NAS software mis-reporting that something is wrong with them. They are noisy, but then they were noisy from the beginning.

I've got a an external 1 TB Buffalo mechanical drive that is probably over seven years old that is still chugging away. I've got a Western Digital external 1 TB SSD that is several years old with is still going. I have three mechanical drives in my desktop right now ( x2 Western Digital and x1 Toshiba), several years old and still chugging away with no problems. My operating system is on a 500 GB Samsung SSD, which again is a few years old now, but still perfectly fine.

I think when it comes to hard-drives of any type, you're always better of sticking to known brands; even though I've had issues with my Seagate NAS drives. I think this is especially true of SSD's. I can thoroughly recommend Samsung SSD's, EVO and PRO versions are the best.

I got the NAS thinking I could centralise my storage and create a porn-bank, but I never really got to grips with it and made it happen and now I can't afford to replace my drives. I have a four bay NAS and with the use of Captain Hind-sight I definitely would have gone with low-capacity NAS SSD's for the first two bays, and then larger mechanical drives for the other two bays.

Do I have a decent back-up strategy? No, I never have, and probably never will

[netzerkaiser]

I got my first desktop PC in '96, and ever since then I've built my own systems. My memory is somewhat hazy, but I don't think I've ever had a mechanical hard-drive fail on me. I've been through a hell of a lot of hard-drives in my time, but only through wanting to upgrade in capacity. The only mechanical hard-drives I've had "fail" on me are the Seagate Iron Wolves I got for my NAS. I use inverted commas because they're still working and my NAS is still going, but my NAS reports them as having failed and having SMART errors. I'm skeptical as to whether anything is really wrong with them, and whether it's just the NAS software mis-reporting that something is wrong with them. They are noisy, but then they were noisy from the beginning.

I've got a an external 1 TB Buffalo mechanical drive that is probably over seven years old that is still chugging away. I've got a Western Digital external 1 TB SSD that is several years old with is still going. I have three mechanical drives in my desktop right now ( x2 Western Digital and x1 Toshiba), several years old and still chugging away with no problems. My operating system is on a 500 GB Samsung SSD, which again is a few years old now, but still perfectly fine.

I think when it comes to hard-drives of any type, you're always better of sticking to known brands; even though I've had issues with my Seagate NAS drives. I think this is especially true of SSD's. I can thoroughly recommend Samsung SSD's, EVO and PRO versions are the best.

I got the NAS thinking I could centralise my storage and create a porn-bank, but I never really got to grips with it and made it happen and now I can't afford to replace my drives. I have a four bay NAS and with the use of Captain Hind-sight I definitely would have gone with low-capacity NAS SSD's for the first two bays, and then larger mechanical drives for the other two bays.

Do I have a decent back-up strategy? No, I never have, and probably never will

Great thread: so much real-life experiences here.

[Visionary_sight]

I got my first desktop PC in '96, and ever since then I've built my own systems. My memory is somewhat hazy, but I don't think I've ever had a mechanical hard-drive fail on me. I've been through a hell of a lot of hard-drives in my time, but only through wanting to upgrade in capacity. The only mechanical hard-drives I've had "fail" on me are the Seagate Iron Wolves I got for my NAS. I use inverted commas because they're still working and my NAS is still going, but my NAS reports them as having failed and having SMART errors. I'm skeptical as to whether anything is really wrong with them, and whether it's just the NAS software mis-reporting that something is wrong with them. They are noisy, but then they were noisy from the beginning.

I've got a an external 1 TB Buffalo mechanical drive that is probably over seven years old that is still chugging away. I've got a Western Digital external 1 TB SSD that is several years old with is still going. I have three mechanical drives in my desktop right now ( x2 Western Digital and x1 Toshiba), several years old and still chugging away with no problems. My operating system is on a 500 GB Samsung SSD, which again is a few years old now, but still perfectly fine.

I think when it comes to hard-drives of any type, you're always better of sticking to known brands; even though I've had issues with my Seagate NAS drives. I think this is especially true of SSD's. I can thoroughly recommend Samsung SSD's, EVO and PRO versions are the best.

I got the NAS thinking I could centralise my storage and create a porn-bank, but I never really got to grips with it and made it happen and now I can't afford to replace my drives. I have a four bay NAS and with the use of Captain Hind-sight I definitely would have gone with low-capacity NAS SSD's for the first two bays, and then larger mechanical drives for the other two bays.

Do I have a decent back-up strategy? No, I never have, and probably never will

Thanks for the recommendations for SSD jackthetreacleeater.

Out of curiosity - I am not too clear what NAS is? And how it is beneficial in data storage?

If you have time can you explain it to me why you have invested in this method? I'm a tad dense lol - therefore - if you can write it in a way that is simple for me to understand - that would be very generous of you too.

[paulyshoresituation]

Where can i store my porn online in case something happens to my external hard drive? Google drive gives you a small amount of gb so create as many gmail accounts as you can?

[jackthetreacleeater]

Thanks for the recommendations for SSD jackthetreacleeater.

Out of curiosity - I am not too clear what NAS is? And how it is beneficial in data storage?

If you have time can you explain it to me why you have invested in this method? I'm a tad dense lol - therefore - if you can write it in a way that is simple for me to understand - that would be very generous of you too.

Hi Visionary Sight, sorry for the delayed response, kept meaning too; kept forgetting.
I invested in this method because I just wanted to control and store my own data. Being a desktop user I've had a succession of hard-drives over the years, which get filled up, then I had to replace them. As I stated, I had this vision of using a NAS as a media storage/back-up location; but it didn't work out for me for various reasons. My main one being lack of money, lack of commitment and certain geographical issues.

Put simply a Network Attached Storage (NAS) is simply a mini-server computer. It uses a Linux type operating system with a number of large volume hard-drvies. The benefit is that it gives you total control over your data and you don't have to rely on paid for cloud services, or free cloud services (which usually have limited storage options). For me I also have issues around privacy, in so far as I don't trust Microsoft and Google with my data, and on principle I'd rather be storing my own data. If you have your own NAS, you essentially have your own cloud storage with extra bells and whistles.
NAS' use bespoke Linux operating systems with lots of options to do all manner of things. To be honest I found it a little bewildering at first with what could be done with the NAS and there is a steep learning curve.
One of the benefits is the flexibility it allows. NAS' come in a variety of sizes: one bay, two bay, four bay, or larger. This give you the ability to expand your storage at your own pace. Even if you fill up the bays your NAS has, you can always continue to extend with extension bays or other attached external drives.
What are the downsides? Well you're responsible for your own data. Any problems will likely be your own creation and you'll have to deal with them yourselves. I.e. if a hard-drive fails, you're forking out the cash for a new one. If you get hacked or ransomeware attacked, again it's your own problem. You are responsible for your own data security. I tend not to worry too much about these issues, as the likley hood of being directly targeted is low. However NAS providers like QNAP have been known to be targets of ransomeware attacks. You don't have to have your NAS attached to the internet of course, you can restrict it to just your network. There is still a cloud element to the situation, because QNAP allows you to access your device remotely through it's own cloyd service called 'myQNAPcloud'.

For the time being, until I can afford to replace my twin faulty hard-drives, my NAS is only serving as a VPN server. I find it very useful in this scenario, having your own VPN server.

I like watching this French guy's YouTube videos, he discusses Linux for the most part, but he has a video here talking about the benefits of a NAS... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBtEJ-iQbeg
If I could start over I'd probably try and use Next Cloud and use that as central nexus. I'd also think more carefully about my initial hard-drive choices.
Hope that helps.

[jackthetreacleeater]

Where can i store my porn online in case something happens to my external hard drive? Google drive gives you a small amount of gb so create as many gmail accounts as you can?

Well, essentially you're already storing your porn online anyway, because in the case of Legal Porno, the scenes you've purchased are held in the PornBox cloud storage. Your external drive is your back-up of what Pornbox holds for.
The issue is, do you trust Pornbox or any other porn website to continue to exist to allow you to access those scenes. There is the danger that those sites could yank your scenes, even those you've purchased, or the website could just disappear over night.
I really wouldn't want to be storing any porn on Google Drive. Sometimes you have to accept that you've got to pay for extra storage. You could sign up for some other cloud storage provider, but you'd need to check their policies to see if it is acceptable to store pornography on their servers. There's also the potential for being accused of file-sharing copyrighted content if you stored it elsewhere.
My advice would be to consider Pornbox to be your cloud storage. Even if you're not buying tickets or paying membership (like me currently), you still have access to the scenes you did purchase. You've got the right strategy of backing up to an external hard drive. My only advice would be to basically back-up the back-up and invest in a further external hard-drive so you can mirror your data. Or you could invest in a NAS and use it as streaming device, by using Plex or something like that.

[jackthetreacleeater]

It would good if Pornbox had the option to download in bulk. It is rather tedious to click on and download inidvidual scenes (which is what I do on Brazzers). It would be good if you could select multiple scenes and download several at a time.

[nilis]

Great topic. I've mostly backed my stuff up on non-SSD external drives. Before that, it was recordable CDs and DVDs, but then the 1080p era hit....and 4k....so optical storage is not gonna cut it anymore. Unless you see yourself filling tall cabinets with all your stuff...which is unrealistic for most people.

As collecting goes (whether is porn, movies, video games, etc.), it's all a matter of space, time and practicality. Unless you have a whole building for yourself, enough money not to have to work, or no other THINGS to attend to (family, other interests, life stuff in general), I say you will soon enough be asking how much of your collection you can realistically enjoy.

Hence a mid-ground solution for most people: streaming.

(no, you cannot be sure your favourite scenes will not disappear from the internet anytime now. then again, anything (text, photos, posts, emails) can disappear from the internet; you can't store it all)

[Visionary_sight]

Hi Visionary Sight, sorry for the delayed response, kept meaning too; kept forgetting.
------------
I like watching this French guy's YouTube videos, he discusses Linux for the most part, but he has a video here talking about the benefits of a NAS... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBtEJ-iQbeg
If I could start over I'd probably try and use Next Cloud and use that as central nexus. I'd also think more carefully about my initial hard-drive choices.
Hope that helps.

Thanks for taking the time out to share with me about storage tech. It was very well explained. I’m going to be re-reading and explore what you have mentioned - so I might ask some further questions lol.

In the meantime - enjoy your day.

[paulyshoresituation]

So besides multiple gmail accounts, any other option? Talking about online storage.

[jackthetreacleeater]

Great topic. I've mostly backed my stuff up on non-SSD external drives. Before that, it was recordable CDs and DVDs, but then the 1080p era hit....and 4k....so optical storage is not gonna cut it anymore. Unless you see yourself filling tall cabinets with all your stuff...which is unrealistic for most people.

As collecting goes (whether is porn, movies, video games, etc.), it's all a matter of space, time and practicality. Unless you have a whole building for yourself, enough money not to have to work, or no other THINGS to attend to (family, other interests, life stuff in general), I say you will soon enough be asking how much of your collection you can realistically enjoy.

Hence a mid-ground solution for most people: streaming.

(no, you cannot be sure your favourite scenes will not disappear from the internet anytime now. then again, anything (text, photos, posts, emails) can disappear from the internet; you can't store it all)

Interesting philisophical point about collecting. Humans are like magpies, we tend to not be able to help ourselves from collecting one thing or another; mostly rubbish which has no practical or useful value to our lives. I'm guilty of various collecting, which started with comics and magazines when I was younger. I gave up that and then moved onto porn! Storing your own collection is always going to be an expensive habit, but I would recommend it over relying on third party cloud storage or streaming. But yes, streaming is the happy medium. I like looking upon my mighty piles of VHS and DVD's though!
The problem is all collecting has its consequences, particularly environmental. Our general collecting leads to mountains of consumer crap. People think digital storage doesn't have any consequences, but our obsession with storing all information ever recorded by humans leads to massive server farms pumping out huge amounts of heat and using up vast quantities of energy.

You mentioned the video size; I'm curious as to what size people are downloading in? Web, VGA, HD, 1080p, 4K? I was downloading Brazzers videos in 480p and 720p, then started in 1080p eventually; which does take a up a lot of space. I don't currently download my LP scenes, but I guess if I did I would only do it in HD; as 1080p file sizes are massive and 4K even worse.

[nilis]

Interesting philisophical point about collecting. Humans are like magpies, we tend to not be able to help ourselves from collecting one thing or another; mostly rubbish which has no practical or useful value to our lives. I'm guilty of various collecting, which started with comics and magazines when I was younger. I gave up that and then moved onto porn! Storing your own collection is always going to be an expensive habit, but I would recommend it over relying on third party cloud storage or streaming. But yes, streaming is the happy medium. I like looking upon my mighty piles of VHS and DVD's though!
The problem is all collecting has its consequences, particularly environmental. Our general collecting leads to mountains of consumer crap. People think digital storage doesn't have any consequences, but our obsession with storing all information ever recorded by humans leads to massive server farms pumping out huge amounts of heat and using up vast quantities of energy.

So many points made. I've got to say, though, I do believe all online storing and internet servers, in general, could go to hell any minute, lol. And when that happens, you'll feel relieved you got some backup from your fav scenes, as well as your print comics and VHS tapes. By the way, take care of those, man. Humidity and dust have no love for them.

You mentioned the video size; I'm curious as to what size people are downloading in? Web, VGA, HD, 1080p, 4K? I was downloading Brazzers videos in 480p and 720p, then started in 1080p eventually; which does take a up a lot of space. I don't currently download my LP scenes, but I guess if I did I would only do it in HD; as 1080p file sizes are massive and 4K even worse.

I'd say most people are not picky when it comes to quality; more like a "whatever looks good on the screen I'm gonna watch it in" sort of approach. This makes sense when looking at what well-known torrent sites regularly offer: from small-sized versions to 11 GB for thirty minutes of the same scene.

(if you think about it, collecting Brazzers scenes is less of a burden for your external HDs: overall good quality with runtimes around 35 mins or so. not that I'm saying AV should aim to shorten up their stuff, but...)

[Zechariah]

My 3TB hard drive memory is ready to be full

[MackZatis]

From my years of "collecting" (about 2008-2009 to now & shorter than my "viewing" career) I've accumulated between 40-50 external HDD's all ranging between 2-6TB. (I'm in the DAP-A train of thought camp. Store big loose big, store small, loose small, plus drives are dirt cheap Amazon prime overnight a 4 or 5 TB for under $100 USD)
I'd say that approx 25 are of the 2-4TB varity & the rest are 5 & 6TB.
I've got my fav's (1,000's of scenes) on 3-5 different drives so I'll likely never loose them.
I obviously don't have all of them hooked up & active at once. And power them all up once a year or so to maintain magnetic alignment of all the 1 & 0's so the data doesn't disappear. (yes that's a real thing)

Also, I've been lucky, VERY LUCKY in regards to drives dying on me. Won't really give numbers or brag too much as I'm superstitious, I'll just say I can count them on 1 hand. Maybe my use & storage habits just align with long life span. I don't go out of my way to do so, but I am conscious of it....

[faros1945]

Hello everybody, my little opinion. I have about 12tb of material. I have one external of 12tb (seagate) and other 3 of 4tb each one autoalimentation. each week I make a backup. at the moment noproblem. May be in the future I would like to have a third copy in a different place...but at the moment no economicla possibility..Only one idea for me is super clear..in general the cloud have more risk thank own hard disk..war/political situation..etc etc..you wake up one day..and all disappared..

[sumacs3]

The 3 Steps to Data Storage
Hard Drive --> DVD-R --> Blu-Ray M-Disc 25 GB

Hi. I like to collect favorite stars, especially from 2000-2005, when DVD scenes were commonly at a higher resolution than the corresponding web scenes. So I would download a scene, or acquire the related DVD, if available. Many of these DVDs begin to disappear online after 15 years or so, and there is also the problem of how long a DVD retains its physical reliability. So for your favorite go-to scenes, you want to copy them to a durable medium. I used to simply save downloaded files to a blank DVD-R as a data disc.

As best I can tell, the most durable and least vulnerable medium looks to be an M-Disc, either as a Blu-Ray or as a DVD. Things like USB keys, SD cards, and external HDD's can fail for no obvious reason. The M-Disc holds files that can be thought of as being "written in stone." M-Discs are much more resistant to heat, light and water damage than regular discs.

Note that a write-once only disc such as an M-Disc can hold your files and be invulnerable to subsequent viruses and malware, whereas the other alternatives can be vulnerable once you connect them again to your viewing device.

One can copy the original DVD VOB files to a hard drive and then save them on a 25 GB Blu-Ray M-Disc. I have found that the average DVD porn scene, in the VOB format, is close to 1 GB in size, even if it actually is located on two adjacent VOB files. You can also use a program such as Avidemux to copy the video and audio into either an AVI or MKV container and save those to an M-Disc.

The "cloud," by its name alone, makes me avoid it for primary storage.

Here is a real-world durablility comparison after 2 months in soil:
Regular Blu-Ray vs M-Disc Blu-Ray

Left: Regular Blu-Ray - Right: M-Disc Blu-Ray

http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/ind ... eview.html