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TL:DR; Go get some free Hard Drives from people throwing away old computers and fill them up with all the media you like so it doesn't dissapear into the void!
1/14/25
"The internet is forever" is mostly true, but not always. Videos get pulled from Youtube, streaming services remove movies from their catalogue, books get banned (yikes america), webcomic artists delete their work - a little bit of media gets removed constantly.
I've seen so many: "They took my favorite show off Netflix, where can I watch it now?" Nowhere. It's gone.
Hundreds if not thousands of Terrabytes of data become 'Lost Media' (or paywalled/moved to another region) every day, which means the media you like is always at risk and you could lose access to it.
The way to combat that is to save it.
Hard drives, DVDs, CDs, whatever. A physical copy of media has more staying power than a $19.99/month subscription fee, where the terms of agreement on what media they will allow you to have access to is flimsy at best anyways.
Someone with a hard drive and a little bit of time and effort spent collecting and organizing the media they enjoy may be the only person to have some media that went missing. That could be one of us!
Oh, and it's cheaper to do it this way. Those subscription fees add up fast...
If you find this argument convincing, below is written ways you can save your favorite media, in as safe and cost-effective ways as possible.
1.) I need a good place to save it.
The best place to save large amounts of media is Hard Drives (Hard Disk Drive), specifically internal ones. The best models of these are 3.5 or 2.5 inch inch SATA drives.
They are cost-efficient for their storage space (as low as $0.014 a Gigabyte), and there are so, so many ways to get your hands on one for cheap or free.
The best way of which is see if any local businesses are upgrading their computers. If you find this, you are about to run into dozens of cheap dell desktop computers with 1Terabyte hard drives. You can buy them for something like $10 each or even just get them for free.
Garage sales, online marketplaces, e-waste recyling centers, and even schools frequently toss out old computers, and if it's getting tossed out, you may as well ask to have it.
NOTE: Hard Drives have a shelf-life of 3-5 years, but that's only when they are being frequently used (like in your own personal computer). As long as you don't store yours in a vat of acid, it should work perfectly fine whenever you decide to use it in the future.
The only additional thing you will need to manage the data on these is a way to connect your computer to these drives. You can do that by putting them inside your desktop computer, but if you have a laptop, or more than two of these HDDs, try searching for 'SATA to USB Adapter', or 'HDD Docking Station'. This should pull up some results, and they typically run less than $25.
IMPORTANT: These hard drives will probably come with stuff already on it. To delete all of it effectively and completely, do the following after you've connected it to your computer:
- Open 'File Explorer' (the little yellow manilla folder icon)
- Go to 'This PC'
- Right-Click the drive you want to format
- Select 'Format'
- Enter the name you want for the drive in the 'Volume Label'.
- Select the format Type (NTFS is the one you want, or exFAT if you have very old computers)
- Click OKAY
OR (this is just a different way to do the same thing)
- Click the Start button, and search for 'Disk Management'. (It can also be found by going to your Control Panel, then System and Security, then Administrative Tools ('Create and format hard disk partitions' in little blue text))
- Right-Click the drive you want to format.
- Select 'Format'
- Enter the name you want for the drive in the 'Volume Label'.
- Select the format Type (NTFS is the one you want, or exFAT if you have very old computers)
- Click OKAY
(NOTE: If you have the $money$ to buy hard drives outright, use DiskPrices.com to find the most economical option for you. It even links to where you can buy the drive you want. If you have $$MONEY$$, then I suggest investing in Solid State Drives (SSD), because they last twice as long under frequent/heavy use as HDDs do.)
2.) I need a good place to get it.
I'm going to do this in a very simplified way, because there are so many ways to download media online, but only a handful that I think are safe and reliable.
Movies, TV Shows, Music
The Pirate Bay is the golden standard of sharing media. If you are downloading from here, familiarize yourself with the use of VPNs, because your internet service provider will see you downloading from here and threaten to cut off your internet service. Which VPN you get doesn't particularly matter, just don't use anything free. To make it easy, here's a list of 5 good ones, and if you click on 'visit site' next to a VPN through here it shows you working coupon codes and pricing models.
(ProTip: Lots of Youtubers have partnerships with VPN companies and provide coupon codes for VPN subscriptions. Just google the name of some popular youtuber and 'VPN code' and you will find a coupon).
If you do not have access to a VPN for whatever reason, a phone that can create a 'WiFi Hotspot' is just as good (especially if you use a mainstream provider). Turn off the WiFi on your phone so you are only using cellular data, and connect your computer to your phone's hotspot. You can now download from ThePirateBay without making any company mad. I have been doing this for over a decade and have had no issues, aside from slow downloads depening on the strength of my cellular service. But remember not to go over your data-plan's limit if you have one!
Lastly, you will need a special software that lets you download these files; BitTorrent Classic is by far the best and most used one.
(NOTE: The 'SE' and 'LE' on this website stand for Seeders and Leachers. People who are hosting the file, and people who are downloading it. The more seeders there are, the faster and more available the file you want to download is.)
Books
Library Genesis and Z-Library are the two most trustworthy and reliable sources of books. If you can't find a book you're looking for on one, you can probably find it on the other. But you will notice that when you click on the links I provided...the URLs they send you to are wierd! That's because they are special, and these websites only fully work while using a special web browser, called Tor.
This browser is just like chrome or firefox, except it lets you visit websites they can't, and keeps you anonymous while doing so. Just make sure to 'Connect to Tor' when you launch it. After that, visit these websites and make an account. You can now download whatever books in whatever file formats you like!
(I prefer to download books in the EPUB file format, because they are small and can be used on any e-reader).
(ProTip: A good way to read or organize your books is a software called Calibre.)
Games
This follows the exact same method as using ThePirateBay in the Movies, Shows, and Music steps from earlier (download a torrent file, run it while being anonymous online), but instead you will be downloading these torrent files gifted to us from a real internet hero, FitGirl!
After finding and clicking on the game you want, you're looking for this:
Online Videos
I will update this...
3.) I want to organize it.
Don't worry too much about being organized. Write in sharpie what is inside the HDD on its top face, like "Horror Movies". Or, if you have a lot of media on one HDD. make a 'Movies', 'Shows', 'Music', and a 'Books' folder, that should be enough. If you want, you can organize by genre, but that's up to you.
4.) I want to use it.
What's the point of having it if you can't use it! Softwares like VLC Media Player will be able to play any kind of media you download. If you want something especially for music, however, try Foobar2000 or WACUP.
5.) I want to share it.
Easy! Connect your hard drive to someone else's computer and move the files over. If you want to do this en masse, two 'SATA to USB adapters' or something like a 'Dual HDD Docking station' will be needed. That allows two HDD's to be connected to a computer simutaneously, and files can be moved directly from one to the other.
I only suggest doing this next part if you think you have media nobody else on the internet has access to, so firstly check online if what you have is already being shared. And remember, sharing is inherently dangerous because you are sahring access to media for free, and that makes capitalists mad.
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Open your torrent client and click 'File'
Select "Create Torrent" or "New Torrent" or "Add Torrent". (It's phrased differently for every client.)
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Choose the file you wish to share.
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Add a few public trackers to your torrent (a current list of which can be found here: http://torrenttrackerlist.com/torrent-tracker-list/).
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Be sure "Private Torrent" is NOT checked.
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Upload the torrent file that is created to zippyshare or any other web host.
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Seed away.
Once all is said and done, you will have spent less than $100 to save a lot of media from getting lost forever, and will never, ever have to pay a subscription fee again. Have fun!
Comments
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maya ✧˖*°࿐
For older books/classics I'd also recommend the Project Gutenberg website! <3