Storage System for Thousands of CDs and DVDs?

Lucy V. asks: "My husband works for a firm in New York that receives customer data on CD and DVD. After copying the data to their server, they are required to retain the original media for several months until the job is delivered and the customer has approved the work. It is common for the firm to have 30,000 CD's and DVD's on hand at any one time. They are struggling to find a better storage solution than what they have now as the current setup is awkward and requires quite a bit of space. They are removing the media from the jewel case and slipping them into one of those large notebook style disk holders and then storing the notebook on a shelf. I have spent quite a bit of time doing web searches for CD and DVD storage but nearly all the racks that I find are low capacity ones intended for home use. I have found one vendor called Can-Am that makes a high quality steel drawer system that might fit the bill." Has anyone found (or put together) a storage system that can handle thousands of discs?

Re:Interns and Cake Containers

[CodemasterMM]

Hey, I'm an intern currently!

Wait... I've been making labels for the past two weeks.
Crap, he's right.

Re:FIFO is key

[gknoy]

Interns. =)

Re:Contact a company that does this for a living

[Red Flayer]

It looks like you're trying to find a "better way" to store these vast libraries of CD and DVD materials rather than rolling your own.

If she wanted a solution from Clippy, she would have used MSOffice Help.

eMule

[DrXym]

Use eMule or another P2P network. Lots of users would love to archive your customer data for you.

Interns and overseas.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Remember, interns are cheaper than actual solutions."

Yes but the shipping to India will inflate costs.

Re:I have that at home

[Control Group]

*blink*

You have these at home? And they only cost $25 apiece?

Where did you find the space for a bookshelf that's roughly as long as a seven-storey building is tall? And where did you buy them (or the materials for them)? I don't have the room in my apartment for a twenty-two meter bookshelf, but if the price scales down appropriately, I want in.

Re:FIFO is key

[lahi]

Store it vertically and make it LIFO instead. Someone else stated the height of a CD as 1.2 mm. So you just need one rod of 36 m length. Of course you will need to ensure that the CDs are sorted by date at all times for ease of access. You can use the well-known Hanoi-algorithm for that. Just have two more identical rods for buffering.

-Lasse

A company called SSI has exactly what you need...

[ameline]

A company called SSI has exactly what you need.

See: http://www.ssiworld.com/products/products3-en.htm [ssiworld.com]

They even have impressive videos of their products in action. They can handle almost any input format you can imagine. CDs, DVDs -- they'll even handle Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs.

400,000 CD storage facility

[tomlouie]

> ... as many as 30,000 CDs and DVDs on hand ...

Pththth, amateurs. These guys are storing almost 400,000 AOL cds [nomoreaolcds.com]

Re:Bookshelf or spools?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool, the old-spindle-on-the-shelf trick. Someone needs to patent this idea.

Re:"Keep the original CD" = silly requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, you say that now, but just think of what'll happen come 12:00am, January 1st, 2000!

Re:Interns and Cake Containers

[Anonymous Coward]

The main thing though, is the numbering system Without that, the whole thing fails miserably no matter what.

No, the main thing is the steady-supply of interns. Without that, the whole thing fails miserably.