I'm sure someone is already covering this but... just thought this was important.

End of December a bunch of info is being deleted.

Edit:The banner says the EPA Archive is being "retired". With the administration's historical handling of data, it seems the concern is access to any historical data, which would still be accessible in "snapshot collections".

Maybe.

What do you guys think about the latest generation Apple Time Capsules A1470.

It was built and sold by Apple between 2013 - 2018 and then got discontinued.

2 and 3TB HDD Options were available.
for 299 and 399 USD.

It uses a Seagate Barracuda, 3,5 Zoll, SATA

Nowadays you can get these Time Capsules for pretty cheap.
Do you think they are a safe option to store data on?
If yes, for how many more years can they be used?
What are the risks?

Wirh AI being able to reverse-engineer anything, and being trained on vast amounts of data - and from what I understand, running out of material to train on in some cases - people might "hoard" pieces of data to prevent them being mined.

Edit: what I meant exactly, is that before, people hoarded stuff to collect it. But hoarding also can mean "hiding, keeping to yourself" and that might become more true with people not wishing to have their data extracted/being trained on, etc

Concerned lurker here.

I recently saw several articles claiming that the Environmental Protection Agency's archive has been slated for retirement on Dec. 31, 2026.

What is the current awareness regarding this, and is this seen as a legitimate concern?

Are there any current efforts to backup this important resource?

The preservation of this archive is a conern being that it has been used in court to prove harm to both people and the environment and has functioned as a protection against such harms.

EPA [site](https://archive.epa.gov/) and notice of retirement.

Edit: additional context

When I'd heard Cracked.com had unceremoniously started removing their own archive, I panicked. I hadn't visited Cracked in many years, but there was a time it was easily the best site on the internet. I, of course, came right to this sub, but barely found any discussion of Cracked, let alone an archive, so I decided to see what I could do! A month and some change later I finally finished rescuing as much of classic Cracked.com as I could before more of it disappears.

What started as a simple archive turned into a full completeness audit using Cracked’s surviving indexes and sitemap, the Wayback Machine, Common Crawl, and historical metadata. The main target was roughly the 2005–2017 “golden age” of Cracked.

During the audit I found thousands of old column URLs that weren’t represented in the original archive set I started with, so this ended up being a much bigger project than expected. There are a handful of old external Flash/video embeds that are still dead dependencies, but the archive itself is intact.

The final result is:

• 13,710 preserved pages
• 6,341 articles
• 5,537 columns/blog posts
• 1,011 Photoplasties
• 821 Pictofacts

I packed the archive as a ~14Gb ZIM file for viewing / self-hosting with Kiwix. Full-text search and sort by year included.

I’m not sure about the rules on sharing here so I'm sharing the actual ZIM/torrent separately in r/DHExchange so other's can enjoy as well. I will remove the link to that post if against the rules, but I wanted to, at the very least, share my accomplishment here as I could never have done anything like this without the years spent lurking in this community.

Had an old Satnav disc in my car, and currently being curious about how this thing work.

Does anyone know what is the best way to rip a DVD that contains file?

Hey! I'm fairly new here and looking for advice or even just discussion on organisation...

I work at a company with ~5 TB of media archives (mostly video, with some pictures and audio) and I myself have ~2 TB of personal video projects, etc. While they're organised into folders with a logical naming convention, there is almost no way to know what is inside them without either being intimately familiar with them through experience, or opening them up and literally scrubbing through clips.

Is this a problem other people have? I'd love to hear about how you solve it. I've been building an app to handle this with local AI analysis, keywords, search, etc... but I'm not sure if there is a better approach... thanks in advance for any advice!

I've been trying to find full recordings of older red carpet events and film festival broadcasts, but I'm having almost no luck.

I'm specifically looking for things like Cannes and Venice Film Festival red carpets, photocalls, press conferences, and other events like the Oscars, BAFTAs, Golden Globes, etc.

I know you used to be able to do it on the Viewstats website, but that option isn't available anymore.

I'm worried it will do something using my phone.

I'm looking to start burning and archiving some movie files and media onto Blu-ray discs using my macbook.
I haven't bought any hardware yet, but I found a Pioneer BDR-S06XLB locally for a good price. Before I pull the trigger, I want to make sure I understand how this setup works

Can I take this Pioneer drive, put it into a generic 5.25-inch external USB/SATA enclosure, and successfully use it to burn Blu-ray discs ?

Will macOS natively recognize the drive for writing/burning once it's connected, or are there major hurdles with third-party software compatibility on modern macOS versions?

Besides the drive itself and an external enclosure with its own power supply, is there anything crucial I should watch out for (like specific chipset requirements for the enclosure to ensure proper communication)?

Big surprised

Hi all. Sadly have to post here as I really cannot find any relevant advice when googling this, and most reddit posts I've seen are about creating a 3-2-1 system and storing massive amounts of data. That isn't what I need.

What I need is basic offline storage for myself and my wife's personal files. Tax documents, photos, music, word docs, and digital art files are pretty much all we'll be storing - around 200gb currently, but will obviously go up over time. Previously I had these stored in Google Drive thru an old enterprise subscription, but I've now lost that.

I really don't want to use a cloud service, mostly because I don't want my access dependent on a third party, and I also don't want to have to subscribe indefinitely to something that could get more expensive over time. All I need is something to back up to in case one of our computers or phones breaks or gets stolen. I don't need constant access - I want to throw the files in there and forget about them until I need them.

What is my best option here? Should I be looking for external HDD or SSD storage? Are there alternatives that won't degrade over time? What is most cost effective? Maybe a cheap used computer with a ton of storage? Refurbished drives?

Sorry if this is a redundant post, but thanks in advance for your help!

I'm looking for software that can organize hundreds of graduation/event photos into folders for each person.

Some photos contain diplomas with names, which could be used to identify and group the surrounding photos.

Before building my own solution, I'd rather use or adapt something that already exists.

Does anyone know an app, GitHub project, or AI tool that does this or something similar?

Open source, paid, cloud-based — all suggestions welcome!

15 will be reduced to 13 with bank offer. is this a solid deal considering current inflation or should i wait? i personally wanted just 2tb but the prices are way too high

So I am the Head Organizer for a Meetup that has been running for about 15 years. I joined Meetup.com in the first week of its go live. For multiple reasons, including the platform just not being that great anymore and no longer having the funds. I need to close the Meetup account.

15 years and over 600 events is a crazy amount of history. Meetup.com has no native method for backing any of this up. There is an API you can use if you sign up for Meetup Pro. But I only have rudimentary programming skills and it would take me quite some time to develop some kind of backup program.

Does anyone know if something like this exists already? Or a tool that scrape Meetup.com effectively?

Thank you in advance!

A friend of mine passed away 8 years ago. The few things I have left of him is a Twitter account. If possible, can I somehow scrape his entire post history into a text document? Thank you.

Unfortunately one of the songs I like by a small artist was pulled from all streaming platforms a bit ago and I didn’t even notice until today. I am generally better about not making this mistake, but slacking got me this time. I have a number of songs on a Spotify playlist by more-obscure internet musicians and groups I keep as a master-list. I’ve been intermittently backing up the songs from this list onto my server because I foresaw many of them being removed due to the financial costs of keeping them on streaming for really small groups. True, they’re often backed up on YouTube. Some are not though, and that’s exactly the issue here. It’s my fault cause I knew it could happen and made a setup I could use to avoid it, but I still slacked. Learn from my mistake and just get your stuff done ASAP.

Hey guys, was reaching out to see if anyone has been using any alternatives to SpotDL lately.

I have a massive library from downloading music this way but lately SpotDL has been very spotty, it will take several tries to find songs, then not find them at all, it won't find songs from obvious titles, and several more download errors than usual.

I've updated everything to their newest releases, re-installed it entirely, but still, very inconsistent.

Does anyone use an alternative to SpotDL that actually works right now? Thanks in advance!

I am considering refreshing a number of drives in my Synology 920 and 1621. The drives are a few years old and mostly 10-12 tb drives. I have a local seller who checks out to be reliable who has 4 28TB drives and 2 26TB drives. He says he bought them a year ago and they had minimal use. So far he wants 600 for the 28s and 550 for the 26s. I know once I swap out I can sell my existing drives on eBay and recoup some money. Are the prices he is offering good? Realistically what should I offer for them. He may give me a better deal in take all so he doesn’t have to deal with several customers. I use my drives for plex server, photos storage and PDF mostly.

Hi everyone, looking for quick advice on a privacy vs. warranty return dilemma.

My standalone Synology DS920+ Docker drive suddenly died. It spins up, but neither DSM nor macOS (⁠diskutil list⁠ / System Report) recognizes the controller board at all. 
The catch: the drive contains old Frigate footage from 4 interior home cameras. Because the PCB is completely dead, I can’t do a software wipe. I bought it from a 3rd-party seller (refurbished/clearance), and even though they'll likely just e-waste a dead drive, mailing back un-wiped footage of my home makes me uneasy.

A few quick questions:
1. Would you write off the warranty/refund and just destroy the drive for peace of mind?
2. If destroying it, is drilling through the platters the best way?

Thank you in advanced for any help with this!

Looking for best settings to scan artbooks on my flatbed scanner (e.g. ppi, color bit depth, file format, etc).

Looking for something "visually lossless" (so like mp3 320kbps > FLAC).

A collector has generously offered to digitize a rare 1995 Nickelodeon VHS this Monday for an ongoing broadcast restoration project.

He has the necessary equipment and cables, but has never digitized a VHS before. Given the rarity of the material, we're hoping to get the highest-quality transfer possible using the equipment he already has.

Would anyone with experience in VHS capture be willing to offer some guidance on the process, recommended settings, and common mistakes to avoid?

We can provide his equipment details. Ideally, we'd like to preserve as much of the original video and audio quality as possible without unnecessary processing or compression.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

UPDATE 10-25-26: The collector unfortunately didn't have the proper VCR to do the digitization. If anyone is in the Denver are and has the capabilities, send me a DM. Thank you all for the great suggestions, connections, and responses. You guys rock!