[Ham-Computers] Recorded Radio, (was) FAT32, How many partitions?

[Philip]

Hi,

First, I hope the following isn't abusing list rules as it's not "Ham" 
related.  If it is I'll consider myself duly "Slapped down". Perhaps the 
following will make it "ham related" ;-)  There are many references to 
"Shortwave Radio", instances of CW in use, and even Ham communications in 
some of these old programs.  ("The Shadow" frequently used Shortwave). One 
instance that immediately comes to mind is the insurance investigator Johnny 
Dollar calling his home office from South America via Amateur Phone patch 
(no telephones available).  Even the atmospheric noise sounded real.  Yeah, 
probably a flagrant violation of "Non Commercial use" rules, but then the 
general public probably didn't realize that.  And such use of "Ham Radio" in 
those shows probably sparked the interest of more than one budding ham 8^)

I really couldn't tell you how many DVD's it would take to hold all 132GB of 
OTR (Old Time Radio), I don't have a DVD burner.  But there are over 20,000 
files in the collection.  A VERY SMALL percentage of them are JPG's for CD 
labels or other documents, but the rest are all MP3 files of radio programs, 
probably averaging about 30 minutes/show, of many different genres.  Most of 
the "Well Known" shows like "Lone Ranger", "Lux Radio Theater", Superman, 
and "Suspense" are there  along with some very obscure stuff, most of it 
going back well before 1970. It is a constant "work in progress" correcting 
dates, show titles etc.

And even though I spend a lot of time listening to it, it's unlikely that 
I'll ever hear all of it in my lifetime ;-)  Since I received all of it free 
of charge from others who freely shared it on the net (nearly all of it is 
public domain) I don't mind sharing with others, though at the present time 
it's only practical for me to do so by loading it on an external Hard drive 
provided by the recipient (NO DVD burner here).  I 'could' load a small 
amount on USB memory sticks provided by the recipient.

As is to be expected of 50 year old programs, overall audio quality varies 
from great to terrible.  Many half hour programs average about 6.6MB in size 
and are recorded at a 32KB bit rate, others vary from a 16KB bit rate to 
greater than 128KB rate.  A LOT of old "Americana" here, but also some stuff 
from the BBC, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

73 de Phil  KO6BB

>> I have a question about Hard drive partitioning.  I presently have about 
>> 132GB of "OTR" (Old time radio programs) that reside on both a 320GB 
>> drive in my computer AND on a 250GB external drive, both formatted as 
>> NTFS.  A local friend wants me to copy this for him, but "prefers" FAT32 
>> so the files can also be read under Win98.

>   How many DVD-R/DVD+R's will it take to hold them all?