you stupid,....you should have used a CDmarker

[boosh]

Yep,..I should,...

Now I

[Cry Logic]

Labelling/Marking doesn't help much if it's been so long

you can't remember what the labels mean.....

 

I recently went through my disc collection and even

though they were all labelled I still had to physically check

each & every one.... just couldn't remember.....

 

Over 500 DVDs/CDs ...

 

I still haven't thrown them out because I remembered

a song I did a few years back in Reason 3 and I now

have to go through them all again to see if I can find it....

[Jeff da Weasel]

Labeling is one of the first things you're taught as a beginning engineer. There are always a number of great reasons to spend the few minutes writing detailed notes for each recording.

[Anderton]

Here's what I do: Give each CD a name that relates to the date (year/month/day) it was made, like 071225. If I make more than one CD a day, then there's a letter suffixe (071225A, 071225B, etc.). Each CD has a text file that says what's on it, and I have a Word document that contains these text files, cross-referenced to the date.

[Jeff da Weasel]

Yup, same here. I use the date as the first and foremost identifier, for CDs, file names and so on. So I have a lot of things that are, like, "crystalsands_120307", and that's a good first step to being able to tell what it was later.

[boosh]

 

Labeling is one of the first things you're taught as a beginning engineer. There are always a number of great reasons to spend the few minutes writing detailed notes for each recording.

 

 

 

Oooh Jeff don

[UstadKhanAli]

I can't remember what's on the disc a couple of days after I make it, so I label the thing quite well. If it's a data disc, I'll sometimes include a word document describing briefly what's on it.

[blue2blue]

 

Yep,..I should,... Now I

[Taylor Davis]

 

Yep,..I should,... Now I

[John Sayers]

 

(year/month/day)

 

 

That's definitely the new date system to use Craig. I hope it gets picked up because it avoids the confusion of the two dating systems in Europe and the US where the month/day are reversed.

[spokenward]

I was hoping for some content management tools with this thread Once a software category - now pretty much gone...

 

I use the NERO disc naming convention YYMMDD_HHMM (24 hr clock). Once you have more than one machine you can still run into naming collisions. I have a little script that reads the top level of the disc and collects filedata about selected filetypes. It prompts me for a name and writes a textfile with the tabbed up filedata. It took more than 15 minutes. But I have been using it for years. I mash the text files into a db.

 

If I have discs with folders (content that is not on the top level) I use a terminal window on the Mac. (It is just a Unix-y sort of command)

 

I set up a folder in a HOME directory called VolumeLister

 

This command reads a mounted disc called f'rinstance 051001_1649

ls -lR /Volumes/051001_1649 > ~/VolumeLister/051001_1649-listed.txt

This creates a recursive listing as a text file. I never got around to writing a parser for that text file so they don't live in my database.

 

I want a more comprehensive solution that simplifies tagging or descriptions of the Contents of the raw files. I would also like to embed descriptive stuff like .pdfs. xml files or MIDI.

[blue2blue]

It's the date system I use -- although I use YYYY-MM-DD -- including zeros, of course -- because otherwise you lose sortability. (And, of course, I always use dashes instead of slashes because of the file system issue.)

[Jeff da Weasel]

Remember,..I

[MrKnobs]

Of course you guys realize that if you have 500 DVDs/CDRs the odds are you're only going to look for two or three of them in your lifetime. So, maybe the minutes you save not bothering to label them are time well (not) spent.

 

At my day job, among other things, I'm the "research archeologist." Meaning if someone suddenly thinks they need some old FORTRAN program from 1961 I'd better be able to find it in the huge pile of low density Mac diskettes where it likely resides.

 

I keep two old Mac 512s that can read those disks, for this purpose only. Probably, if I wanted to put the time into it, I could copy and burn them all onto one or two DVDRs. 9 gigs holds a hell of a lot of ASCII text files.

 

In the last ten years, someone has wanted something from that old pile maybe three times. Fortunately, the grad student who created that big pile for me took the time to carefully and legibly label each and every diskette and slip it in an individual plastic cover. Nevertheless, I usually charge a full day's labor for retrieving one of those files and the folks that want them are more than happy to pay it.

 

I love that Peruvian grad student, I wish I could find her and kiss her on the cheek for doing such a great job.

 

But hey, she's probably had 12 kids and died by now.

 

Ah, archival. Usually a huge effort to preserve information that will never be used again.

 

 

Terry D.

[elsongs]

 

That's definitely the new date system to use Craig. I hope it gets picked up because it avoids the confusion of the two dating systems in Europe and the US where the month/day are reversed.

 

 

Logically, when you sort out the file names, it lists them in chronological order.

[alphajerk]

I hear you man. The analogy here in the US is that the mechanic's car always runs terribly.

 

or the plumbers pipes are leaking...

[philbo]

For years I've used a CD cataloging program called CD Tree.

 

I assign and mark a 3 digit number to each CD, with leading zeros included, and store them in that order on the spool thingy that CDs come in when you buy 100 at a time. I also enter that number into the program as the CD title. The program reads and stores the entire CD directory tree and associates it with the 3 digit number.

 

Then, when I need to find something, I can enter a partial or complete text string (such as BuzzBombs tracking session or whatever) and it'll pop up a list of all the CD numbers that have anything anywhere in their directories that match what I'm hunting for.

 

Of course, once all your CDs are cataloged, you are well advised to back up the database file to another CD.

 

It's saved me hundreds of hours of searching over the years.

[MikeRivers]

Why make CDs?

 

I make very few, mostly things like backups of articles I write, or software that I download. I'm a terrible housekeeper, so sometimes the best cleanup procedure is loss. If I didn't back it up before I lose it, I don't have to back it up again.

 

I tend to keep projects in process that create large files (like music, for instance) on the hard drive, and use another hard drive for a backup copy of the whole project. But once it's done, backup is someone else's problem. I usually offer them the backup hard drive and let them manage their own CDs or DVDs if they choose to back it up that way.

 

What I do have here in increasingly growing piles is installation disks for software and drivers that come in envelopes rather than jewel cases, so it's difficult to store them in a way that makes them easy to find should I need them in the future. I should probably throw away those 5-1/4" floppy disks down in the basement and use the browser boxes for uncased CDs in their envelopes.

 

Anybody got a good storage system that lets you find the disk you want?