I don't organize them per-say. When I download a bunch off offline installers, they go into a kind of download batch directory (like 'GOG games 1') where they get their own directory if they have several files (like Wolfenstein TNO or Dishonored). When the directory gets a bit 'full' (either having a lot of files/sub-directories, or too big (let's say 200+GB)), I make a new one. I probably should combine them and all put everything in their own directory, but I can't be bothered. Maybe I'll do it if I'm bored.

Well they do, but not easily obtained, as you need to use something like gogrepo.py to obtain then.

Both Galaxy and no doubt the old GOG Downloader used them.

I have future plans, once I have finished with my current GUI project, of doing a simple GUI for gogrepo.py, just to get a game list with all checksums, that can be used after using other downloaders or your browser, and based on drag & drop of a file.

It will require having Python installed, and a copy of gogrepo.py, plus the free fsum.exe program.

I gave up on burning discs a few years ago, as unreliable and not cost effective, then there is the storage issues.

I find HDDs easier and a lot more cost effective to use, not to mention fitting a lot more, keeping a lot more together. They are also much much quicker. You also need to keep a blu-ray data drive around, which may be problematic going forward.

As much as burnt blu-rays may be more reliable than burnt CDs and DVDs of the past, they are still susceptible to easy damage. It doesn't take much to make one unreadable, and it could occur with one silly mistake.

You also need to be pretty organized when burning discs. Either you write to them in sessions or you save up your files to burn all at once. If a session goes wrong, that's probably the whole disc stuffed. And leaving files hanging around until you have enough to burn, isn't the best either.

HDDs are simple quick and easy and mostly reliable if you take good care of them.

Despite the advances, and there have been many, you still need to apply physics to HDDs, as they are mechanical moving parts unless an SSD, and suffer from expansion and contraction and therefor wear and tear.

If I had the HDD space to burn Blu-rays without quality loss, and back them up on two drives, that would be sweet. I don't care about packaging. Unfortunately I have like 1,000 movies, so it would take many, many terabytes of space, which is impractical. If you have a much smaller collection though, I guess it makes more sense.

Similarly I have a lot of old games backed up, stuff that doesn't take much space, along with any fan patches or mods needed to make them run well today. The newer stuff though, Witcher 3 for example? Too big. Maybe someday.

I presume you mean you have 1000 purchased BluRay movies, not that you have burned that many movies into BluRay discs yourself?

I think the discussion was more about burning discs vs writing them into hard drives, rather than whether you should try to copy all your original BR discs to a hard drive. It would certainly be a lot of work, but then your current BR movie collection is dependent on you having a physical BluRay drive or player to watch them on.

I don't have any BR discs (nor any BR player), but I have a few DVD movies which I ripped into mkv files some time ago, e.g. my Robocop Director's Cut and Infernal Affairs 1-3 DVDs. It gave me a piece of mind as now I am not dependent on having a working DVD player or drive, or whether the original DVDs break up or get misplaced.

I used to use my PS2 console as a DVD player but I am unsure if it works at all anymore (I haven't switched it on for maybe even two years, go figure; I have run a PS2 emulator on my PC though; plus the PS2 doesn't have HDMI anyway), and I removed my broken DVD-RW drive from my aging gaming laptop, and replaced it with a third 2TB 2.5" HDD.

The only ability for me to watch my physical DVD movies anymore is to use the external USB DVD-RW drive bought for my laptops, but instead I used it to rip those DVD movies into mkv files that I now keep on my backup hard drive(s). I can watch those mkv files even on a cheapo tablet if needed (using the VLC media player), no reliance on physical drives anymore.

If I were to make digital backups of BluRay movies, I presume I'd look into re-encoding them to some smaller format with e.g. H.265 (or maybe rather with the royalty-free alternative, AV1), giving much smaller size with minimal (or no discernible) quality loss. But that would still be quite a lot of work and time, for 1000 BR movies. How many of those are keepers anyway?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1

Only way I know of to have a bunch of DRM free movie files without ripping them from discs is to pirate them, and I don't pirate, so... my mind didn't even go there, sorry.

Mmmmm somehow it seems I got misunderstood.
I wasn't talking about ripping Blu-rays at all, especially not movie ones.
I was talking about storing game files on HDD versus burning them to Blu-ray discs, as that is what this topic is about ... backing up games.

Not sure how we got onto movie blu-rays.

P.S. I've now added the words burning and burnt to my earlier post, and made some other words bold to make things clearer.

I've ripped a few of my movie blu-rays to ISO file, and it ain't no quick process, so I've really only done it to a few of my favorite music (concert) blu-rays. Converting them to a compressed format takes even longer, much longer, and you lose the menu benefits etc. The ISO file copies are an exact clone, minus DRM. I still play the blu-ray versions though, and just see the copies on HDD as backups. Most movie blu-rays are going to equate to about 18 Gb or more, with maybe an average of about 35 Gb, and many around 45 to 50 Gb each, perhaps more for some movies or TV series or 3D and especially 4K.

Of course, you are pretty limited in the players that can play such ISO files properly ... menus etc.

I have a NeoTV 550 hardware media player that can, and a couple of android devices, that run the KODI (XBMC) app which is also a fair player.

Of course, if you have a powerful enough Laptop or Media Center PC, and connect to your TV/HiFi system via HDMI, you have a few more options for ISO files ... though KODI works great there too, WIndows or Linux ... even MAC I think.

I'd love to have all my movie Blu-rays and DVDs converted to ISO file, but I have also decided I want a life.

P.S. Just converting all my music CD's to WAV and MP3 files is taking long enough ... years.

I didn't know this was specifically about movies. The message you replied to seemed to be generally talking about making backups to optical discs vs hard drives.

I haven't followed the development of optical writable media (for backup purchases) as I've been using hard drives for that purpose for like a decade.

Most disc-based movies contain DRM. And ripping them (circumventing that DRM) is considered 'piracy' in many western countries (definitely including the USA).

AFAIK, this usually conflicts with privacy laws... typical!
Why not FLAC? Or do you mean the process from WAV to MP3? Because I can't think of a reason to keep music to listen to in WAV format.

Yeah I don't even think of Blu-ray as a storage medium at all, which made me misread your post I guess. Which also means we agree, since you don't want to use them as one. Heh.

Our court system isn't really that simple. Some have supported it as a backup measure, others haven't. It would take escalating it up the system to the Supreme Court to really have a definitive answer, which I doubt anyone feels like paying to do. No movie or game studio would ever sue you for ripping discs though, nor would they know about it anyway.

Then why make a difference between ripping it yourself and downloading it from somewhere else? (maybe via VPN)

I have downloaded DRM-free copies of all my disc-based games. It was faster, safer, and it takes up less space than if I had done it myself. The result is the same - I don't know why one should be considered piracy and the other backup.

Oh I see what you're replying to. I didn't mean everyone who downloads movies is a pirate, in the case you're suggesting I wouldn't consider it that. I'm just saying I've never had a need to download a movie, since I own the blu-rays. The only reason I'd download one would be piracy, which I don't do. Also I would assume uncompressed blu-ray rips are rare and take forever to download? I dunno.

I've definitely downloaded games I legitimately own for one reason or another. To emulate them easier for example, or to get rid of disc checks after chucking my discs.

I would guess we're a very small part of the "download things on torrents" market however.