While I want to call this a how-to, and I suppose it is a bit of one, this is more about a certain method of doing things.  When there are multiple ways of accomplishing a task it’s hard to write and dedicated how-to.  This is more about how I handle media storage and my recommendations.  I’m sure many people have different methods and I encourage you to share them in the comments!

Media storage.  This can cause headaches depending on how much media you have.  A lot of people using Media Center have some recorded TV, music and pictures.  Most people have been dealing with these types of media (except maybe recorded TV) for awhile now and have a system that works for them.  What do you do however when you have several hundred if not over 1,000 video files?  It can get a bit more complicated at this point.  We need to make sure that we have a few things going for us: 

1. Organization-I want to know where my files are.
2. Safety-I want to know that I’m doing everything I can afford to not lose my files.

Now, let’s talk about point two first.  Safety can mean a few different things.  For those with the space and money, safety means setting up some sort of RAID array or server option.  This gives you a mirror of your system and allows you to replace your media should something disastrous happen.  This is definitely something in my long term plans and if you store a lot of media, it should be in yours too.  That being said, the more you have the more it costs.  Not always an option.

Another backup option to consider, and this really works well for pictures, is using something like Windows Live Mesh.  Mesh allows 5GB of online storage which is synced with the PC you install the client on.  I use this free service to ensure that all of our pictures are safe should one of my PCs go down.  Not only that but it allows you access to your content even if you’re not on your own PC through the web client

For me, safety means keeping different files types on different physical drives.  For example, in my Media Center PC, I currently have a total of 5 drives split into 8 partitions.  Archived TV has two drives, Movies, 2 drives.  The fifth drive has three partitions.  One is strictly for the OS and installed apps.  Another is for recorded TV and the last is for Music.  These to me are the least critical media files I have so placing them on a partition isn’t a problem for me.

While technically any of these drives can fail and we’re not really providing any true protection, I do know that if there’s some sort of failure, I’m not going to lose EVERYTHING.  Not the best solution, but again, the ultimate goal is either RAID or a server solution.

For me, my whole system is setup for organization.  As stated above, I keep archived TV separate from movies and music.  I like knowing how to find what I’m looking for.  If we’re talking archived TV, file structure is simple:

Drive:/Series/Season

So an example of how a series would be stored on one of my drives would be:  J:/Seinfeld/Season 3.  This makes it easy for me to not only find the file I’m looking for but also know whether or not I have a complete season or if I’m missing episodes.

Movies are a different beast.  While it’s possible (and recommended, why in another article) to put each movie into its own folder, I’ve taken it an extra step.  I actually split my movies up by genre before putting them into individual folders for each movie.  While genre can be a bit subjective, I find it’s helped me in other ways which I’ll detail in the next post. 

I know it seems like I’ve written quite a bit to not say very much here.  The fact is that when you start collecting media on a hard drive as opposed to physically, there are certain things to consider.  If you’d like to read more about how to manage and utilize your media, I encourage you to read Michael Healy’s great post on the subject.  My method is only one way of doing things, and Michael shares not only how to arrange your files but some tools to make it easier as well.

Clubhouse tags: clubhouse, media center, windows media center, how-to,

Tags

storage, beginner info, media center, windows media center, how-to, clubhouse

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