I have a large and growing DVD and Blu-ray collection.

That’s the stuff I have physically that could take “less space” if I were to rip them and put them onto a massive HDD NAS.

Why don’t I do that?

• Legally speaking if I were to rip anything I’d need to retain the original disc so…
• I archive to Optical Media as the ultimate storage format so I’d be burning the discs to Blu-ray after ripping them so… Why bother? They are already in their final format. I’m obsessed with light, I prefer optical media, I use cameras, I love binoculars and telescopes, I’ve worn glasses since I was 5, and I’m frequently reminded of my own colourblindness, light is something I’m obsessed with and yes I will never not archive to Optical no matter how many try to remind me if the cost of HDD lol
• I literally have no time. I see something on dvd or Blu-ray or an audio cd and spend less than a few mins buying it. That’s enough. I have 1,001 other things I need to do from fixing the car demister again to doing the hovering to finally going up into the attic to sort out the junk there, or do I sort out the junk in the spare room? Or what about the crap in the shed? I literally have more things to do and deciding not to rip digital media that is not rare (some are and should be backed up) is a welcome relief 😁

I also have many other collections that I maintain and need to add to or remove stuff from. Such as the camera collection, the watch collection, the books, the retro games, the retro computers, the Wedgewood pottery (yes I’m serious), the Lladro and Nao pottery figurines and other antiques that caught my eye.

I’m also a guy who has multiple hobbies since I turned 10 in 1990. I have skills in programming on retro systems I’m looking to re-awaken. I have been an avid photographer that shoots both film and digital to this day, and that hobby is screaming at me as my extensive 35mm and 120 film negatives I have made since the early 90’s are totally unprotected as they have not been scanned and indexed yet! That is exacerbated by the fact I’m still enjoying shooting new film and so adding to the pile.

Oh and that’s another example right there, of what I have physically that would take up “less space” digitally: my negatives. Well even when I finally scan them all I’m still keeping the negatives. The scanning is only to allow me to archive them digitally to Blu-ray and have another copy in Amazon Glacier in case the negatives all burn in the house. If they don’t burn in the house, like the dvd/Blu-ray/CD collection, they will out last me considering that silver halide film is one of the most stable storage methods there is.

So yeah why? Well no time. Just simply no time. The film is waaaaay more important to digitise rather than an out of print audio CD. So I’ll happily keep adding to the stack of CD’s 🤣