Are backups worth it in the long run?

[Absolve6780]

Hi,

I have been using MakeMKV for a while now. I was wondering if people who have been using MakeMKV for more than a couple years have ever went back to a backup copy for something, and if so, how frequently. My thought process is that, if I try to follow the 3-2-1 backup rule, then those raw MKV files should stand the test of time. I should also be able to play the raw MKV on Jellyfin or Plex in the future.

My question in its entirety is: How often do you use a backup copy for something? Is it worth taking 1/2 of your digital storage space for this?

My partially related second question is: How often do you "flash" the backup to a Bluray/DVD? If so, what are you using to do it?

Thanks!

[Woodstock]

The definitive answer is, "It Depends!"

If you want to play the BD as distributed, yes, it is.

If (like me) the only reason you bought the DVD/BD was to get the main program on it (don't care about "extras"), no. Especially if you're going to use something like handbrake to shrink the files. Anime takes up only 10-20% of the space that it was on a BD when compressed. Movies take 40-60%. Toss out the extras, and the space savings is huge... and I still have the BDs in storage if I need them for some reason.

Some people sell off the original disks once they rip them, saving only the rip. I cannot say what they decide in the space game.

[Absolve6780]

Thanks for sharing! I think I might just keep the disks themselves as the backups and keep only the mkv as the digital portion. I can get 1/2 of the space back I have now. I'm worried about burning out the GPU/CPU so I don't use handbrake at all. I might look into it in the future.

[Woodstock]

With proper cooling and no overclocking, the CPU/GPU should last for a very, very long time. Mine are over a decade old, and I've run them for encodes for weeks at a time (the various Star Trek disks alone took almost two weeks to encode). But, if you aren't crunched for space, encoding isn't a big issue.

[dcoke22]

I keep my raw rips as well as the transcoded files I end up with.

The smaller files are handy to put on portable devices and use in general. I've probably burned many 1000s of hours of CPU time making encoded files. As Woodstock has suggested, with proper cooling your computer should last a long, long time. I too have had encoding sessions that lasted longer than a week.

The hardest part of turning your collection of movies into more useful digital files is the ripping process. It is the slowest part at least in terms of one's personal time investment. (It might take longer to transcode the rip into a more portable file, but most of that time doesn't require any human input.) When you think about your digital files over a longer time line, say a decade, the type of file you choose to transcode into today might not be the kind of file that'll make the most sense in the future. Having the raw rips means you can easily transcode again from the highest quality source file.

I've only been working on my digital movie collection for a few years. I've transcoded every one of my movies at least once. But in truth I'm on version 5 or 6 of how I encode movies. I've started re-encoding my collection more than once to bring my encodes up to my current standard.

Storing many TBs of rips comes with a cost, but hard drives keep getting bigger and the $/TB keeps coming down. In my case, I store my rips on an OpenZFS pool with a single disk of redundancy (and UPS battery backup). I don't have a backup, but I do have all of my source discs sitting on my shelf. This is how I've balanced the cost of keeping my rips with the convenience of having the rips accessible. In my view, movie rips aren't the same thing as irreplaceable family photos & videos.

[PegasusPilot]

I completely agree with everything Woodstock and dcoke22 said. I’ve never had my hardware fail from the thousands of hours spent ripping/muxing/encoding over the years.

I’d also like to add that I started off as an idiot when it comes to archiving data and manipulating my digital media; I used to think lossy compression was just as good as original mastered sources and have had to rebuild substantial parts of my music library with better quality versions as I realized my file qualities were crap. A single, high-quality backup (following 3-2-1) would have made changing formats from mp3->aac->mk4 or flv->mp4->mkv through re-encoding easier and faster.

Live and learn, I suppose.