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| Porn Users Forum » Looking for some advice on storage |
| 1-26 of 26 Posts | Page 1 |
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| 02-08-13 06:14am - 4335 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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rearadmiral (0)
Active User Posts: 1,453 Registered: Jul 16, '07 Location: NB/Canada |
Looking for some advice on storage I know that various parts of this question have been asked before, but please allow this repeat question since I think the core of it is a bit different. Some background: I download a lot of porn. I keep EVERYTHING I download. I back up EVERYTHING I keep. I have 20 portable hard drives ranging from a 120GB drive that is probably almost 10 years old to a 2TB drive that I bought yesterday. Those are the ones that need no AC plug-in. Apart from that I have 9 backup drives that require AC plug-ins. Those range from a 500GB drive to many 3TB drives. I’m thinking that my backup policy is a bit too anal. (Pun not really intended.) I’m thinking of modifying my plan because it costs a lot to back stuff up and then requires separate physical storage to store those additional drives. My thought is that I’ll back up stuff I can’t replace – stuff like Teasers VOD which isn’t updating and may be taken down, and Nude in LA, which is gone. Those are specialty niches. But stuff like the videos from Videobox, videos from any of the Kink sites, Evil Angel, etc., I’m not sure those are at the same risk of disappearing. My plan is has two big unknowns and those are what I’d like some advice on: Am I reasonable in thinking that sites like Kink, 21 Sextury, Videobox Evil Angel, etc. – mainstream, popular sites – are in no danger of disappearing overnight. My thinking is that even with a 2TB primary drive it’s probably cheaper to assume the risk and just replace the porn if a drive fails than to back it up. I’ve never had a drive fail on me. They get plugged in when needed and then unplugged and are stored in a safe place. Am I just lucky or is the failure rate of these portable drives low enough that it isn’t a real risk? Any advice you have will be appreciated. (And maybe some advice on ‘scrubbing’ my backup drives too. If I opt to change my backup habits I’ll probably sell six or seven drives and will want to ensure that nothing remains on them.) Thanks! | |
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| 02-08-13 06:33am - 4335 days | #2 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User  Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
If you haven't had any drives fail on you, I think you have just been lucky. Mainstream, popular porn sites are not going to disappear tomorrow. But will they still be here 5 or 10 years from now? I have no idea. Will Metart still be updating 10 years form now? Again, no idea. I hope so, I think it's a great site, but they could get shut down by changes in laws, or financial hardship, or whatever. It's easy for me to say, but you would probably be better off trying to delete some of the low quality porn that you've collected, to make room for the newer, better quality content that you might enjoy. It would certainly make your collection more manageable, if you want to find a particular video or photoset. | |
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| 02-08-13 06:45am - 4335 days | #3 | |
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jberryl69 (0)
Disabled User  Posts: 1,000 Registered: Nov 27, '10 Location: neverland |
Looking for some advice on storage? Review and delete, delete, delete. At least once a year. With that much porn on drives, think how many years it would take you to look at it again. One would also think that some of the older stuff doesn't look any better (video quality) than what you might find on a tube site. It's one of the reasons I pop the ones I really like (think, get a boner with) into my editing program and delete the crap and play with the stuff I like (slow mo & music baby). Unless of course, you think there will be a market for them on E-bay in the future. As far as sites in the future, throatjobs is still a site though it has been inactive with new content since 09/20/2010. How long will it remain online? I guess when people stop paying for it or it becomes illegal.  - I'm sure this is not new advice Rearadmiral and that you have probably thought the same from time to time. Still, it's my advice. If you feel this way about my advice  keep it to yourself. If it ain't grits, it must be a Yankee.If you're going to lay her head over the pool table and fuck her throat, get your fucking hand off her throat! Edited on Feb 08, 2013, 06:51am | |
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| 02-08-13 06:48am - 4335 days | #4 | |
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Cybertoad (0)
Disabled User  Posts: 2,158 Registered: Jan 01, '08 Location: Wash |
Well one thing I would do is put my old drives to pasture before they fail and put them on bigger newer drives. I have three main porn drives maybe totaling 3.5 TB about 10,000 movies and some several hundred thousand picture. 1/20 is material over 5 years old. Hard to give advice on anothers collection. I think the hardest is sorting. Hard to sort and not end up admiring and then lose focus on what you were doing.  My collection is outta wack, I tried two months ago to organize and never finished and kept downloading and now it's a mess. So my advice would be get the house or pron under one roof and not dozens, and then from there consider options and what to keep. In 2012 alone I deleted some 2TB of material that was outdated or never watched. I wont delete anything I watch or or want to but I delete stuff that I just won't ever have interest. Perhaps even sorting to weed out what does not at all interest you and make room go from there. Since 2007 | |
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| 02-08-13 06:55am - 4335 days | #5 | |
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KET924aab (0)
Active User Posts: 60 Registered: Dec 18, '12 Location: California, USA |
Rearadmiral, these are very good questions. I dont have anywhere near that amount of porn, but my two 1TB drives are now full. I just ordered a 4TB drive, which will allow me to load all the porn I have on my two 1TB drives onto the new drive, then use the two 1TBs as backups (to be stored in my storage unit in case of theft/disaster loss at my home). I am very selective about what I download, and I am currently going through my old material and deleting the lesser quality stuff. As for your Unknown #1--I think its unlikely that you will wake up one day and find any major site has just disappeared. But I do believe that going forward, there are many porn sites that are going to have to do something about the size of their collections. Most only go back about 10 years. With HD now becoming the norm (and HD2 on the horizon), the bigger sites are likely to find their archives becoming prohibitly large as the years go by. It is going to become increasingly difficult for some sites to store (and more importantly, coherently organize) their entire collections. One solution for these sites would be to keep only about a decade or so worth of material. Stuff older than that might be subject to deleting. I was a member at KarupsPC about 3 or 4 years ago when they deleted a large number of photo sets and videos from their early years. They gave a 6 month warning to members to download what they wanted from the early material. Some sites might not be so thoughtful to their members when the time comes. As for Unknown #2. I have only had a few external drives in my life, and none has failed on me so far. However, I have had several internal drives fail (1 personal, 2 at work). There really is no difference between internal and external drives, so I do believe in the value of backing things up, particularly if the content is no longer available for download online. And don't underestimate the amount of time you might need to re-download a bunch a material if one of your drives fails (do you even keep a list of what you have on each drive?). There are probably quite a few freeware programs out there that will do a sufficient job of scrubbing your drives. | |
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| 02-08-13 06:55am - 4335 days | #6 | |
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jberryl69 (0)
Disabled User Posts: 1,000 Registered: Nov 27, '10 Location: neverland |
^ "Hard to give advice on anothers collection. I think the hardest is sorting. Hard to sort and not end up admiring and then lose focus on what you were doing." I probably have 1/10th (one 2T with about 1.2 T gig of porn) of what you do Cybertoad and I have the same problem. And I still go back and delete the crap but staying focused on the task is a bitch! If it ain't grits, it must be a Yankee. If you're going to lay her head over the pool table and fuck her throat, get your fucking hand off her throat! | |
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| 02-08-13 09:47am - 4335 days | #7 | |
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RagingBuddhist (0)
Disabled User  Posts: 893 Registered: Jan 23, '07 |
rearadmiral - What a coincidence that you put this story up right now. I'm in the same situation as you. Like you, I hate to delete anything and I also have a ton of drives, some dating back to the 90s. About a month ago I started going through the drives, making sure I had copies of everything on at least two offline drives and consolidating the data from the ancient 80, 120 and 250 gig drives to 2 terabyte drives. My thoughts on it all? For one thing, don't slap the anal label on it. If it's a hobby for you, it's just that - a hobby, nothing more. As far as the reliability of backup drives, I'm with you on the offline method. With thousands of hours (and a ton of money) wrapped up in my collection, I actually keep one set of drives in a safe. I tend to stay with 2 TB bare drives, using an eSATA dock to hook them up to the PC. Unlike the 3TB drives, I see them as time tested enough to have a reasonable expectation that they'll last. But, even when one does die (it's happened here), I still have a duplicate. I like bare drives over externals because of the cost factor. When I see a great sale on a drive I like, I jump on it even if I don't immediately need it. I just leave it in the box until I do. Sites do disappear. Some also change what they keep on their servers, dropping their older content. I'm not saying that the heavy hitters you mentioned will suddenly drop out or change what they offer, but unless you have a direct line to the webmasters, you never know what they have planned for the future. To me it's a classic case of better safe than sorry. In the event that a site does disappear, it'd be a shame to have to say to yourself, "If only I'd saved it..." For wiping out your data, I think every hard drive company has a utility to do a low level format and I'm pretty sure they're all available from the their websites. They all do the same thing - they write zeros to every bit on the drive, leaving it totally blank. There are also third party utilities you can use. I use one of the apps in Glary Utilities. Unlike some of the drive company utilities, it can be run right from Windows instead of from a CD at boot up. It also allows you to configure how many re-writes you want to do, further ensuring the erasure of the data. Sarcasm is a body's natural defense against stupidity. | |
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| 02-08-13 01:07pm - 4335 days | #8 | |
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Wittyguy (0)
Active User  Posts: 1,138 Registered: Feb 04, '08 Location: Left Coast, USA |
x Edited on Apr 20, 2023, 02:34pm | |
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| 02-08-13 01:47pm - 4335 days | #9 | |
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jberryl69 (0)
Disabled User Posts: 1,000 Registered: Nov 27, '10 Location: neverland |
I believe even sites like Evil Angel deletes some of their older material. Stuff I got from there is no longer there. If it ain't grits, it must be a Yankee. If you're going to lay her head over the pool table and fuck her throat, get your fucking hand off her throat! | |
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| 02-09-13 01:26am - 4334 days | #10 | |
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davel60 (0)
Disabled User  Posts: 11 Registered: Jan 21, '13 Location: USA |
I have never had an external drive fail, but have had numerous internal drive failures. As storage keeps getting bigger and cheaper, I am upgrading and transfering my collection to new external drives. The capacity of hard drives today is simply amazing. | |
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| 02-10-13 10:35am - 4333 days | #11 | |
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Cybertoad (0)
Disabled User Posts: 2,158 Registered: Jan 01, '08 Location: Wash |
I rune ho swap externals so when I am full down load I can put a mini fan right on the drive my DL exteral drive runs ice cold. Since 2007 | |
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| 02-10-13 11:41am - 4333 days | #12 | |
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Reveen (0)
Active User Posts: 96 Registered: Apr 06, '09 |
Conversely I've never had an internal drive fail but have had several externals fail. Externals are just internal drives in an enclosure with usually a seperate power supply. Given the work that they have to do, hdd's are incredibly reliable, what happens is that sometimes a bad batch comes out from a factory and that gives a brand a bad name for a while. The only HDD manufacturers left are Seagate and Western Digital, some people swear by Seagate, some people swear by WD but in real terms, aside from anecdotal evidence there's little to differentiate the two. | |
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| 02-10-13 11:46am - 4333 days | #13 | |
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Reveen (0)
Active User Posts: 96 Registered: Apr 06, '09 |
There's a nice little utility called CPUID Hardware monitor from http://www.cpuid.com/ which you can use to monitor all kinds of temperatures including hdd temps. If an external is running hot then thats down to a poorly designed enclosure, my samsung externals run ice cold as well. | |
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| 02-10-13 02:05pm - 4333 days | #14 | |
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skippy (0)
Active User  Posts: 78 Registered: May 19, '07 Location: out there |
Ok, here's my two cents...I'm a 15 years in IT guy. So far, everything I see here makes sense in terms of file management. Drives are getting cheaper and cheaper, but they also occasionally fail. I have about 3TB of on-demand data, mostly images, so it is a really huge number of files. (I just ran a file properties size scan and it is 3.1TB, 1,221,000 files...) Now, with the improvements in speed and quality, especially the advent of HD, most videos prior to about 2005 and any images from before about 2002 are probably not going ot fill your screen. I have about 500GB of older stuff that is archived. I've got a couple of things that most people don't, but they arent that tough to do if you have a little extra hardware or are ready to upgrade your PC. I have an A/V server with 15TB in it. It also acts as a backup server for all of the computers in my house. You can by Windows Home server, which will manage backups automatically, for about $60.00. It is a crippled version of Windows 7 server. I also have a Blu-Ray burner. You can cram 50GB onto one of those. So all of my old stuff goes onto Blu-Ray. My new stuff gets backed up on a server. These days, you pretty much have todownload entire zip files to get the pictures you want, so I am also constantly going through and culling images I don't want. I keep the original zip files, so I still have the file if I change my mind later. Oh, one more thing. When you upgrade your PC, be sure to keep your drives. As long as you are not using an advanced drive partitioning scheme, you will be able to plug it in to a newer computer and it will probably spin right up and become accessible. (Assuming you are on Windows and using SATA drives). You can also buy an external SATA drive housing and just drop it in there. As long as you have an external SATA connector, you can plug it in when you need it. Skippy | |
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| 02-10-13 02:08pm - 4333 days | #15 | |
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RagingBuddhist (0)
Disabled User Posts: 893 Registered: Jan 23, '07 |
They might be the heavy hitters in the industry, but I think the people at Toshiba might resent your saying that.  Sarcasm is a body's natural defense against stupidity. | |
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| 02-10-13 02:13pm - 4333 days | #16 | |
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Cybertoad (0)
Disabled User Posts: 2,158 Registered: Jan 01, '08 Location: Wash |
I use a free program called speccy at http://www.piriform.com/speccy These guys are the makers of CCleaner, and Recuva Since 2007 | |
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| 02-10-13 02:18pm - 4333 days | #17 | |
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Cybertoad (0)
Disabled User Posts: 2,158 Registered: Jan 01, '08 Location: Wash |
Hey sounds like me, but I have more years then I am going to post LOL not gonna date myself too much. Great advice Skippy, I had not thought of the blueray backup. This is a great Idea. Since 2007 | |
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| 02-11-13 06:01pm - 4332 days | #18 | |
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rearadmiral (0)
Active User Posts: 1,453 Registered: Jul 16, '07 Location: NB/Canada |
Thanks to all who commented. Your advice has been useful as usual. But I'm still undecided. Less undecided than before I read all your replies though, so that's a good thing. Here's what I'm thinking: 1) I'll continue to back up my collection. The cost and extra space of the additional backup drives is just one factor. If one of my 2TB primary drives failed there would be membership fees and a lot of time to replace what I lost. And with the price of drives coming down it makes less sense to stop backing up. 2) This summer I'm going to try to purge the collection. Part of me knows this will be difficult because I'll watch something and remember it and want to keep it. Part of me also realizes that on more than one occasion I've taking a liking to a star and discover that I have several of her older scenes already. But... it might also be easy since I'm becoming a bit of a size queen with my porn. So much of the older stuff is probably unwatchable due to the low resolution. It was cutting edge when I downloaded it, but that was a long time ago. So unless it is a star I really like or a favourite scene, then I'll consider deleting it. The net effect of all of this will be that (after considerable work) I may be able to retire some of my older and smaller drives. Anyway, thanks for your advice on this. I definitely appreciate your input. | |
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| 02-12-13 10:51am - 4331 days | #19 | |
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Capn (0)
Active User  Posts: 1,740 Registered: Sep 05, '09 Location: Near the Beer! |
All my backups are Toshiba. Touch wood never a problem. IIRC my oldest one is about seven or eight years old. Cap'n.  Admiral of the PU Hindenburg. 2009 PU AwardHilarious Post of the Year 2010 PU Award ( I would have preferred it to be Helpful Post of the Year for Guys who Hate 'Retail Therapy' ) :0/ Sanity is in the eye of the Beholder! | |
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| 02-12-13 11:44am - 4331 days | #20 | |
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turboshaft (0)
Active User Posts: 1,958 Registered: Apr 01, '08 |
Never mess with an industry that might employ slave labor!  "It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hardcore Commie works." - Gen. Jack D. Rippper, Dr. Stranglove | |
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| 02-12-13 12:21pm - 4331 days | #21 | ||
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turboshaft (0)
Active User Posts: 1,958 Registered: Apr 01, '08 |
No, you really can't keep it all, and even if you wish to be buried with a boner, you still can't take it with you.  Duplication is a good idea but it makes things doubly insane in terms of what to keep and what to toss, because if you have a certain amount of space then you're bound to want to fill it up instead of keeping half the drives for the originals and then the other half for backups. It's the same mentality that when you buy more food (like in bulk or when it's on sale) you just end up eating more than you would, instead of saving for later. And like food, my eyes can sometimes deceive me in terms of what will be good for the rest of my body. Anyway, I would recommend a good review of material when you have time. Not going through every single photo or every frame of video, but a review of what you can live without (okay, that's a little vague), what you like, and what you love so much you can't live without (minus whatever you're wife or whoever would get really pissed about  ).I've got some stuff that took me a while to build up; I kept going back to the site and didn't properly organize it afterwards, plus the site used only proper names and without numbers so it was a mess in terms of organization (probably morals too, now that I think about it  ). But this stuff I've definitely backed up--hell, I've triplicated it, even though the site's not going anywhere and I just don't sit down and watch it that often.
I sort of agree here, in terms of the way sites "reorganize" and fuck over hoarders and organizers, or they just don't have much apparent organization in the first place (so like half the videos have either "hole" or "pink" in the title--really original and helpful there). But some stuff I can't see going away totally. For example, much of the classic stuff out there, at least how the industry vaguely defines it, is still around online or even in DVD form if you're desperate. I imagine that things like Evil Angel and Max Hardcore videos are still going to be warping minds and attracting weird loyal fan cults well into the future, no matter what kind of oppressive dystopian precrime/Minority Report hellscape we've crafted for ourselves. Even in the Escape from L.A. future (or 2013...) the San Fernando valley is flooded and people are still obsessed with sex--granted, the U.S. is a theocracy and eye patch wearing and motorcycle riding seem to be bigger priorities, but still. "It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hardcore Commie works." - Gen. Jack D. Rippper, Dr. Stranglove | ||
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| 02-12-13 01:00pm - 4331 days | #22 | |
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RagingBuddhist (0)
Disabled User Posts: 893 Registered: Jan 23, '07 |
I agree - that's why I absolutely refuse to shop at Walmart. Toshiba's ethics may suck, but they are still a third hard drive manufacturer. Then again, most of the hard drives I've seen lately are made in China - and I've seen some reports of horror stories in their factories too. Looks like capitalism is devaluing labor worldwide now. Sarcasm is a body's natural defense against stupidity. Edited on Feb 13, 2013, 10:25am | |
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| 02-13-13 08:16am - 4330 days | #23 | |
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jberryl69 (0)
Disabled User Posts: 1,000 Registered: Nov 27, '10 Location: neverland |
One suggestion here - If you look at the entire project as a whole, it will be overwhelming. My suggestion is to create a file folder and dump 100 items into and delete the ones in that folder you don't want to keep placing the remaining ones back into their original location. Then stop till at least the next day. I think you will find that manageable, though it could take the rest of your natural life to complete. If it ain't grits, it must be a Yankee.If you're going to lay her head over the pool table and fuck her throat, get your fucking hand off her throat! | |
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| 02-14-13 09:19am - 4329 days | #24 | |
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rearadmiral (0)
Active User Posts: 1,453 Registered: Jul 16, '07 Location: NB/Canada |
Good suggestions, and I'll follow them. I think just getting rid of the stuff I never watch AND is low resolution will be a good starting point. | |
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| 02-14-13 12:20pm - 4329 days | #25 | |
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jberryl69 (0)
Disabled User Posts: 1,000 Registered: Nov 27, '10 Location: neverland |
^Until I started to go back and edit stuff - essentially getting rid of the crap - I never realize how poor the quality can be. I recently did this with the last scene put on the throatjob.com site in the fall of 2010. Mallory Rae Murphy, in a scintillating throat job. Notwithstanding the fact that I could have bitch slapped the videographer (as when the videographer pans to her ass while she's smoking his rod to the bone) AND the moke/producer (who keeps adjusting Mal in a doggy position so the camera has some phantom angle he wants or the fucked up way he has her lay her head to the side of the couch end so he can whack off for the money shot - which was weird cause he did all he could not to pop his nut several times before the end. He asks and she tells him she wants him to cum in her mouth and the tool misses her head completely and hits her BACK!!), the over all resolution of that video sucks! But I did the best I could to sharpen the picture, edited out the crap, and slowed down some of the great stuff, I ended up keeping a fraction of the original production. I do tend to edit out most whacked off dribble money shots which splash nothing and just end with the last best shot prior to that. For those that have a prodigious amount to splash (think Winston Burbank or Jonni Darkko) I'll edit the whacking to the last stroke before it erupts. Which for Winston, it's weird cause he makes it sound like and acts like he can hardly contain himself ..... then whacks off. Sorry... I realize this turned into a and is suddenly  If it ain't grits, it must be a Yankee.If you're going to lay her head over the pool table and fuck her throat, get your fucking hand off her throat! | |
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| 02-14-13 02:59pm - 4329 days | #26 | |
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RagingBuddhist (0)
Disabled User Posts: 893 Registered: Jan 23, '07 |
Yeah - THAT never happens on here on! Sarcasm is a body's natural defense against stupidity. | |
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