<@&1480181806744731748>

Following up on our last update from 3/11, where we confirmed the archive download was completed (~385TB), we made a team decision to share a bit more detail on what’s been happening so far

Since then, there’s been some great convo’s in chat between the community, mods, and devs. We figured we’d compile key points from these discussions so everyone can see what’s happening behind the scenes and understand the progress being made

📦 What’s happening right now?

Although everything has been acquired, the work is far from over.

The website is one thing, but as far as the data is concerned, The devs are focused on two major areas:

Verification and integrity checks across the entire archive

Torrent generation and distribution to make the archive accessible to everyone

The goal right now is to make sure it can be accessed in a practical way—even for those without tons of storage.

🔍 Why is it taking so long?

Some have been saying that progress has been slow and we hear ya. so here’s some perspective that was recently shared by one of the developers during a community discussion.

Working with ~385TB of data is massive. For example:

A single system hashing at ~48 MB/sec would take over 100 days nonstop to process everything

That doesn’t include additional overhead like opening compressed files and hashing their contents, which are often larger than the original archives

This is extremely computation-heavy. Good news is that Thanks to the access of high-speed infrastructure, hashing is happening at multiple GB/sec, so progress is going as fast as it can—but it will still take time.

🧪 How are files being verified?

From the recent discussion:

Hashes are compared against trusted DAT files

Crowdsourced hash contributions help validate files

Multiple hash types (including SHA-256) ensure strong verification

One question asked was: Why re-hash if hashes already exist?

Existing hashes typically apply to entire zip archives

But for proper verification against DAT files, hashes are needed for the individual files inside those archives

That means the archive has to be processed at a deeper level which, unfortunately, adds a lot more time needed for such a task. But this will ensure a much higher level of accuracy.

Of course, as with any archival or preservation project, we encourage our users to always follow standard best practices when working with downloaded files once access is available.

📁 Will the archive be updated or expanded?

We’ve also received questions about updates or including current-generation content. At this time:

No immediate plans to expand the dataset

Focus remains on verifying and stabilizing what we already have

Current-generation content is intentionally avoided to stay aligned with long-term preservation goals and minimize legal risk, ensuring the archive remains accessible over time.

🤝 Final thoughts

As many of you already know, this has been a community-driven effort from the very beginning. From the people helping source data, to those contributing hashes, to everyone asking questions and staying engaged—it all plays a role at the end of the day.

We really appreciate the patience and support from everyone while this work continues. There’s still more to be done, but progress is steady, and we’ll keep sharing updates as things move forward.

Thank you to everyone, from the bottom of our hearts, for your support. Without you, none of this would even be possible. The dedication of the crews behind the scenes, along with community contributions in helping, testing, and organizing, has been immeasurable, and we seriously can’t thank you enough. The curiosity, energy, and feedback you bring make this project what it is.

We have come so far and are getting closer every day to our goal. It’s going to be exciting once the day comes when we can open the doors for all of you.

Until then, it’s back to work for us!

Let’s get through this together,

One File at a time

❤️ — Minerva Archive Team

We also have another update on torrents beta testing. SEE BELOW

👷 🚧 Hey Everyone, 🚧 👷‍♀️ <@&1480181806744731748>

We got some more information regarding the torrent generation that we’ve been mentioning for quite some time now, especially in the recent mention in the last announcement.

We’ve recently begun testing on the **torrent distribution side**. For now, this is only happening between a limited group of members. These people who we like to call ‘Hoarders’ or ‘the Distribution Team’ , alongside the Development Team, are testing the torrents internally.

***(To be clear: Before you ask—as of now this is a closed beta test, we don’t have a set time for when we can give access or be able to fully release this just yet. We’ll share more details once we can be sure that it’s ready for the next steps.)***

The group is seeding and sharing the data between them as part of an “early rollout” so to speak. The plan is to start spreading the data out so it’s no longer sitting in just one place. our aim is to secure the data by having multiple copies of it so we can ensure that it goes safely, securely and consistently to those who matters most; into the hands of the community.

Basically; we’re making sure the archive stays safe and available no matter what happens. Whether that’s hardware issues, downtime, or anything unexpected that maybe we haven't thought about; if it happens, the data will always be available.

On behalf of our ongoing commitment to transparency, we are finding that we need to include more detail into our updates to, hopefully, reduce the amount of repeated questions. But for those who still need to ask, we got a couple of breakdowns for you below.

🚪 **Why isn’t it public yet?**

At this particular moment, torrent access isn’t public yet for a few reasons:

Right now, our attention is currently on making sure that whatever ideal environment we can come up with can be replicated at scale.

Things like how the torrents behave, making sure transfers go smoothly, and catching any issues early before it causes a domino effect full of problems are things that are being looked at carefully.

Keeping this limited also gives us time to figure out the best way to roll this out properly as we want to avoid opening things too early and running into instability or worse, having access unintentionally shut itself off in some way.

In short, we gotta get things as good as it can be first, so when it does open up, it’s something that works and can be as reliable as it can.

🌍 **What’s next?** 💻🖱️

While the testing happens, we also have to decide on how we are gonna get the torrents out to the community. Work on the website is being done to ensure the best rollout and availability we can safely guarantee.

As per usual, keep an eye on <#1480146718279335996> for when the torrents will be released as they will be announced there once they become available.

**Please, do not ask us to release the material in any other way other than torrents.** We know it has its shortcomings, but for now, it’s the only way we can make sure that the archive reaches everyone without falling into the same pit Myrient found itself in.

📜 **Final note** ✒️

At the end of the day, it may not seem like a lot but it’s an important step forward in making sure the archive can function as intended and pick up where Myrient will leave off.

Whatever happens, we’ll be here to work things out and deliver the best archive we can muster. But for right now, that is pretty much it. We will have more to share soon as development continues, so keep a look out for more notices from our team.

and of course, as soon as we figure out more, you guys will definitely be informed.

Thank you guys so much.

🐾 — Minerva Archive Team

In Loving Memory of MiNERVA BOT

( Please be patient -.- )

Hello,

I have curated roughly 5 TB of ROM sets from myrient and made torrents for them.

This is a continuation of my previous posts, and for now it's probably close to the limit of what I am capable of storing and seeding.

I would like to thank all the people that have contributed, and seeded, I really appreciate it! Hopefully we can continue to seed this for a while and keep them alive! I plan to seed them for years to come!

Unfortunately I've also had some people that used most of my bandwidth to download (roughly at 50 MB/s or more) and I checked their IPs online they were dedicated servers, and after they finished downloaded they didn't continue to seed :(

I have made the choice of filtering duplicates when equivalent files exist in different formats, for pragmatic reasons, I believe these choices should be acceptable for really most people.

For example CHD files are preferred when available, while myrient for example contains both CHD and archives ISOs for the same console. Only decrypted files were chosen, for example for PSN Files or DS files.

Here are two paste mirrors containing the magnets and current stuff I have backed up:

Consider clicking view raw as dustebin doesn't seem to allow copy paste?

or

I am looking next to curate the PC gaming section, but it's gonna be harder to do, as all files are mixed : You have abandoned games in the same folder as say a modern game still available everywhere such as Elder Scrolls Online (that is also a MMORPG so the files get updates very often) On top of that the files are in folder for first letter of the name (so grouped Alphabetically)

But I don't believe it's an easy task, I am looking to do this via a script or so, to be able to select only the important files to save

in a few hours myrient will be gone...

fuck ai

It is 8 o clock on the East Coast.... All is silent on Myrient

Yeah so Myrient had a LOT.

So I coded up a downloader/manager app (yes, I had LLM help some scaffolding due to the time crunch, but I've been coding and building websites longer than Google has existed, plus myrient was going down in a few days and LLMs type faster than me - this wasn't just 'make me a myrient downloader go go go'). I was going to share it on but I got flamed pretty quick with arguments that didn't make sense..

So I kept it for myself, I guess..?

I do however have a full nosql database archive of all content and managed to get:

folder Local: 117,726

hard_drive Local Size: 4.60150 TiB

I'm not sure if this tool could still be useful for anyone managing a mirror or even parts of the mirror; if your files are in the same paths (directly leeched) then it should be able to pick them up and allow you to manage them with extra metadata and stuff.

I also designed it so that it would be able to pull from a different server in the future, or even multiple mirrors.

Not sure if anyone here would be interested or if I'm just gonna get flamed again (the argument was apps like this is what killed myrient, except 1. this was never going to be hosted, you have to download it and run it on your server, so its not like I was going to run a site acting like it was my archive, 2. myrient had ftp and rsync and completely open leech, I designed this app so I *didn't* have to leech full libraries and delete after but instead ONLY download what I wanted/needed)

Iuno, if this or the SQL database is useful to anyone I can potentially make it available. Also willing to seed/share the approx 1% I did get lmao.

And thats it fellas… she’s gone. It’s been fun. Prayers up that everything with Minerva goes well

With large, single-file games, like CDs or DVDs, there's no problem. But downloading 5,000 NES ROMs or 45,000 MAME ROMs one by one can be a nightmare.

Not to mention that some of these sets are updated quite frequently and contain a lot of repetitive and outdated information, which will scatter the seeds.

Some sets have their own torrent (separate from the archive), such as those from .

A few recommendations:

Use magnets; they're safer.

One romset/magnet per system, and update it once a month if necessary.

Or, a single magnet/torrent file per project; No-Intro, Redump, TOSEC, MAME, FBNeo, Pinbal, Digitoxin, TDC, eXo, etc. This can be a great option (similar to the MAME software list), making it easy to download and share. If you need to download a single system or a single game, just select it from the list.

If magnet links or torrents are already available, share the original file or invite those people to the tracker.

That's all.

Best regards.

Another victim of AI

What was the most obscure item or collection you found on Myrient? Let me know cuz I am sad I only recently found the site and didnt get to dig around much.

Also feel free to mention your favorite rom you found there.

I know there was some uncertainty with that on the devs end and was just wondering if there had been any word.

I check it everyday! AMAZING PROGRESS!!!

It looks like “most” or “a lot of” it has been archived. But the total downloaded is less than the 400tb mentioned is a few other posts. Why is the total downloaded different?

Update: I see on the Minerva Discord that “Quick update:

Downloading has been doing extremely well, the mirror is now over 300T validated. 🙂”

What a time to be archived!

As the title says, i have too much storage available and i would like to have a myrient copy and share it with others.

I already have some things from Redump: 100% Wii 100% Xbox 360 ~50% Playstation 3 And a few others

I primarily downloaded with with wget so far.

Since the banner that myrient will shut down download speeds are super slow (~250kb/s)

I tried manually forcing different mirror servers lile f3. and others but I couldnt get higher download speeds.

With these low myrient download speeds its absolutely impossible to save more than ~10% of myrient. Is this a lost case?

I do like the Idea of Torrents as make it more Affordable to keep site/tracker up

But I had a Worrying Thought Today that with Torrents being Public that means that anyone can Track It by anyone

So can that be Stopped?

title

EDIT: there back up now(at least i was able to get into discord)

Thanks for everything old friend, we are going to miss you.

Ps: 01:13 Portugal West GMT+1

So I'm new to this and I'm kinda dumb. How do I use the archive?

Just want to join, that's all.

I copy pasted this off of their discord.

1. Project Announcements This is a statement I have received from the Archive Project Team.Project Announcement We want to provide a clear update on the current state of the project. At this time, Myrient is approximately 90% archived. A substantial amount of data has already been secured, and ongoing work is focused on retrieving, verifying, and accounting for what remains. In parallel we're also working to build secondary/tertiary/etc backups of the data utilizing space community members have volunteered. From a technical standpoint, this work has involved reviewing the top-level folder structure, identifying and assessing the contents that have been received, and carrying out hashing and verification efforts to help confirm data integrity. This is an important part of the process, as archival is not only about obtaining data, but also about ensuring that it is organised, traceable, and as reliable as possible. We also want to acknowledge that there has been a lot of noise surrounding the project. Despite that, progress has continued. One of the methods we had planned to rely on unfortunately fell through, but this did not stop the project. That method was only one part of a broader retrieval strategy, and multiple backup methods had already been running in parallel. Because of that, we did not lose time, and work continued while our development team pushed forward with alternative solutions. To be clear: The project is still making strong progress. Reaching approximately 90% archived is a significant milestone, but the work is not finished yet. Our current priority remains the retrieval, verification, and confirmation of the remaining data. As for what comes after this phase, the longer-term future of the project is still being discussed. We do not want to make premature statements on next steps before those plans are fully settled. For now, our focus remains on completing retrieval and ensuring that this archival effort is carried through properly. Please also note: Data Hoarder and Developer applications are currently on hold until further notice. We truly appreciate the interest from those who have wanted to support the effort, and any updates regarding applications will be shared when appropriate. In addition, we would like to ask that any/all scripts not be used for the time being until further notice while we complete confirmation and review. If you are currently using it, we kindly ask that you pause use for now until further guidance is provided. Thank you for your continued patience, support, and trust. We know many people have been waiting for a clearer update, and we hope this provides better visibility into where the project currently stands. MiNERVA Archive Project Team

I recently read an emu wiki page about formats and found Zstandard compression to be a great choice for anyone that downloads and plays games.

Also, why is vibe coded the only flair that allows posts?

I and many other people, want to help conserving myrient's archive. The ideal way would be with torrents or magnets, where can we find some ?

I missed the thing entirely, I would've loved to join the contest and submit my logo.

But I'm curious, is a winner picked?

I have one terabyte, how can I help preserve myrient ? I can’t let my pc run 24/7 so I can’t make a small server, is there anything I can do ?

Anyone mind creating and sharing a new Discord link? The one in the sidebar and found in various threads is expired. Thanks!

Hello,

I have created some torrents for some backups from myrient I managed to download, and shared them on multiple sub-reddits

While it's not much in terms of space, it can still help reduce the load on myrient, or obtain stuff you want.

The overall size is pretty small, but I managed to download some slightly larger ones, such as Neo Geo Cd 47 Gb, Sega CD 122 GB and Sega DreamCast 632 GB

The biggest ones are still being seeded by me, and nobody download them completely as they are big and I created the torrents yesterday, but DreamCast is close to 40 % seeded, and I can upload way faster than myrient

The other torrents have been downloaded and have more seeders, and can be downloaded extremely fast from torrents now

In case you see something that you can download instead of going to myrient servers feel free to use them, as well as share them if you want

Copy pasting from my other threads:

Please seed, and also if you plan to download something from Myrient and a torrent already exists, please use the torrent

Here are two paste mirrors containing the magnets and current stuff I have backed up:

Consider clicking view raw as dustebin doesn't seem to allow copy paste?

or

I will add some new in the future, and if you have any recommendations or changes I should make I am open.

EDIT: Added Sega Saturn and Nintendo DS and DSi

I dont know much abt websites like Myrient, The Vault, etc but is there any way to have Myrient saved somewhere in parts? Like having someone save it all somewhere and but it up for download by parts or a bunch of links by different people leading to certain games (categorized by alphabetical order for example, or even by saga)?

Im really concerned for the situation on Myrient (and also bc I enjoy playing games that dont cost $100 for full experience) and I would love to help in any way if anything is being done on saving this website or its contents.

title

I have an NAS at home where I could backup 9TB unraided and 5TB raid 1 for the platform, how is the best way to proceed? Could take care of smaller packages or maybe entire consoles if their data would fit on my drives.

It should create a private tracker and use torrents but force people to permenantly seed torrents that the tracker automatically tells them to download and seed. So you can download whatever you want but in addition the site will automatically tell you which torrents you need to seed permanently and each torrent is set to have a minimum of 10 or more permanent seeds (set by the owner of the site). So each member permanently seeds 5TB or so and if they stop seeding that then they get banned.

This costs minimal money and is actually sustainable. There's a minor inconvienience of not being able to update a torrent with new content but you can always create a new torrent such as "PlayStation Complete Redump Part 2" for example and it's better than having no Myrient content at all.

I really don't see any other solution. If the owner of the site hosts all the content himself then the server, storage and bandwidth costs will be huge. So you have to have the content spread out amongst seeders. This could be torrents or some other kind of file sharing.

A Discord community called Minerva was set up by people to archive all content on Myrient. You can help by archiving a portion of the site's files. Instructions are here:

And do the wbfs files work for backwards compatibility for the wii with gamecube games

Basically i tried to go to Minerva website and tried to test how downloads could work. When i clicked on the download button it opened my file explorer and asked me where did i want to save the file ended in .torrent (canceled it as i dont know how it works)

From what i have heard you need programs like qbittorrent and you need to seed those files so you "share" them to more people who are trying to download them, couldnt this lead to a security risk if someone puts malware in those seeds ? what could i do with the .torrent file after downloading it ?

check the sidebar

hi everyone. here is the winner for the MiNerva logo! i copy and pasted this announcement from discord, so don't click on any of the u/ usernames. reddt automatically converts @ somebody to u/ so these are probably js random accounts except for the users who have actual reddit accounts

Without further ado, here are the logo contest finalists (and the winner)!

• In first place, with the most votes at 152, is with a logo that combines the classic floppy disc save icon with the goddess Minerva.

• In second at 131 votes, @🌟 rosemary 🌟 with a CD inspired logo.

• In third at 115 votes, , with a very stylish M logo.

• In fourth at 86 votes, , with a logo that combines the goddess Minerva with a retro controller.

• Last but not least, In fifth at 71 votes, , with a wise (and geometric) owl.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Of course, we received way more than 5 submissions, so here are some honorable mentions:

• With 51 votes, with their retro-inspired goddess.

• With 43, and their pixel art M.

• And at 40 votes, who took inspiration from another of Minerva's symbols, hellebore.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ After an internal round of voting, the team agreed with the rest of the community and ’s logo is the winner, with as the runner up.

What are the plans to host the Myrient contents after the backup? It's clearly an expensive site to run, so it makes sense to think about how to make hosting this content more sustainable. For example, hosting the content via torrents may make it easier to spread the hosting costs. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

I got over 300TB of spare tape storage and I could back it all up.

I will have a look today after work if I can script something, main challenge will likely be slow download since everyone is jumping on it.

As soon as I heard that the site would be shutting down, I immediately started downloading most of the titles I wanted to preserve at the beginning of the month. Since I had a free 2TB HDD, I began downloading all the smaller titles first.

I managed to download entire game libraries as well as custom homebrew games, all organized in separate folders.

I downloaded all games from:

Nintendo: NES, SNES, Famicom Disk System, N64, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, DS, DSi, Pokémon Mini, Virtual Boy, and all homebrew for them.

Atari: 2600, 7800, Jaguar, Lynx, and all homebrew games.

Sega: SG-1000, Master System, Genesis / Mega Drive, 32X, Saturn, Game Gear, and their homebrew titles.

What I still don’t have:

Nintendo Game Boy Advance — I will download the full library (about 14 GB) along with the homebrew games.

For Nintendo GameCube, Wii, Atari Jaguar CD, Sega CD, and Sega Dreamcast, I’ll have to choose specific titles because the files are very large. I would need around 1TB for each library to download everything. Unfortunately, I don’t have that much storage space to keep it all. Not to mention PS1, PS2, PS3, PSP, Xbox, and Xbox 360, which are massive collections.

I really hope that because of all the attention this issue is getting, the creator of Myrient will receive a lot of donations. If only they could give us one more month to make a full backup 🙏.

It doesn’t have tags or anything yet. I made this sub quickly because time isn’t getting slower. Myrient is still dying and we have to get this sub up as quickly as possinle

I really need to know lol.

Whenever i try to go onto it will just say site cant be reached

I am new to this whole thing, and seeing how myrient is gonna be gone in a bit, is there any way to get the games like we could? I heard some people say we can through torrents but I also heard others say they are not safe and a huge privacy danger.

Hi,

I was wondering if somehow, using (WebRTC to reproduce the P2P architecture of BitTorrent) could be a way of providing direct downloads for users, while still only managing torrents behind the scenes.

As far as I tested, only drawback is it is pretty slow, but atleast that could work for small files ?

Not sure how it should be configured however, I was hoping it would not represent additional server cost, but I did not dig much on how WebTorrent works.

Is there actually going to be direct download for this down the line with limited speed? I never cared about downloading massive amounts of roms like some others and usually content with downloading as I go when I am in the mood. Thanks for any help and great job on the backup project

This might be a dumb question or already answered, but I've just recently learned about this project to save myrient. Apparently it has been completely archived, as the head mod recently posted on . So I just want to know - is it possible to access Minerva yet or is the website still in production?

Thanks to everyone for the work in saving Myrient by the way.

like the one by bradrevans?

Or will it be torrent only?

So it's not lost!!! :D

I'm interested in old ad campaigns and how aesthetic they could often be. Old Gameboy and early Playstation/Xbox ads were often visually striking and edgy. But I love Amiga, NEC, Commodore 64 stuff too!

There's a ton of magazines for each console and not enough time to look at them all. This isn't talked about as much as the ROMs themselves, what print publications do you guys remember fondly that I should check out?

Just curious if the owners of myrient are aware of the community support and if there's any possible chance the site can be saved.

look at the sidebar, there's a section where it says discord. there's an invite link there, you can join now

I apologize if this has been addressed already. However, since torrents are the future of the site, it would make things much easier to keep seeded, if all the update files for games were bundled with the ROM file itself. Just a tip and if this has been addressed already, please delete this post.

Thank you again for all you guys are doing

Cupe

Torrent link?

I would like to participate in the logo-contest, but I need to submit in the discord?

I click on the invite link, and the invites are paused.

Can I submit it elsewhere?

Can someone add me?

This has caused me to spin my up my last NAS in storage, I have now backed up all roms from 2600 through the complete NA set for PS3. I do not want to archive multiple sets so I focused mainly on CHD (preferred) complete NA sets to fill my 150tb NAS. I will check torrents for seeding otherwise this will be synced to my active NAS and then put into offline archive for a future calamity.

Maybe is a dumb idea, but I have seen this working when vimms lair got hit with Nintendo DMCA, as you could still download some Nintendo games on the wayback machine

as in the indexes. The index.htmls if you want.

I tried downloading just the index.html files and the folderstructure from /files today - down to a search depth of 5 - and was hitting 8k+ files downloaded and tens of thousands of files that would be analyzed or discarded, based on discard criteria like (dont look at zip files, 7z files, chd files, tar files, text files, jpg files, exclude the bitsavers folder, ....).

Looking at 300MB of only index files so far at search depth 4.

Which means - I'm staring into the abyss of madness. :)

There were projects out there that tried to create a myrient search - putting all of that structure into a .json file - but both of them dont seem to work as of now.

So is there any work out there to make the full folder lists attainable - once myrient goes offline -- or even searchable (no downloads, just the lists). Or is it maybe already available in a better structured way?

What I saw today truly made my jaw drop. DLC folders, fallbacks folders for chds of historic mame sets, the mame software lists - i mean, ... you have no idea whats on the site as a casual user, .... which I was so far.

Any input appreciated.

This might sound like a dumb idea, but I remember some years back watching a YouTube video of people in Columbia bringing large HDDs to "businesses" that download movies and TV, and they pay a certain amount of money to get the HDDs filled.

What if volunteers, or maybe the owner of Myrient puts the whole archive onto LTO tapes or large hard disks, but keep a repository of all the titles and files that is available on the website. If someone wants something, they can pay for shipping and shipping back to have certain files or directories duplicated onto a HDD.

There wouldn't be any bandwidth costs this way. If they owner really is spending $6000 a month to host, this would cut the costs way back.

First off thank you and congrats, you guys should get platinum trophies for 100% myrient haha. Just wondering if any one has heard from or reached out to the video game history foundation to see if they would be able to provide options and support? Seems like this would be right up their alley.

Hi community, just saw that a sub created towards preservation of myrient content. Happy to see that people gathered and progress is being made. I myself have started a telegram channel called 'savemyrint' (*not a typo) few people have joined.. I'm uploading PSP files to this channel using Google colab, yet it requires my laptop to be active all time. Since more people are joined the backup initiative and now that there's this community I feel that my quick built up script is lagging behind. I would like someone to have the already backedup files from my channel for more long-term storage. Is it worth continuing the uploads to telegram ?

Spam downloading everything from Myrient is not going to save Myrient. All of these files are available elsewhere and everywhere, none of the data is at risk of being lost.

To preserve Myrient would be to preserve a free and open space where people can download these files easily, and I don't think we will be lucky enough to see that kind of generosity again. Anything else is just data hoarding.

In every post, I see people saying that torrents should be created but categorised. Why can't there be a single 390TB torrent with everything, and everyone chooses what they want to preserve?

Hey,

I literally just found about Myrient and started downloading my favourite ps3 games, but the download speed is on average 20kb/s.

Is there any place the Ps3 games have already been downloaded/saved so I could download those?

Hello all,

In the latter half of last year as a bit of a personal exercise and learning experience, I made SpriteShrink (). I also made it because I came up with the idea and was being a bit of an ear worm so I had to make it to see if it worked and it seems to work well for it's purpose! You feed it variant ROMs of a single game, including ROM hacks if you want too, and it uses a content defined chunker to virtually chop up the files, find the duplicate chunks and only keeps a single copy of each chunk before compressing everything using zstd.

As an example a game I have that is about 384 kilobytes each, I had 8 variants which total about 3 megabytes. After my program is done it made an approximately 460 kilobyte archive which is a respectable ratio. The more variants you feed it the better the ratio due to how it works.

Most recently I added support for yellow book discs. However, it's much less battle tested compared to the regular mode I described above.

For an example of the disc mode, I used my copy of Ff7 which is 3 discs. Before compression it's about 2 gigabytes. After it came to about 880 megabytes. I used similar solutions to how CHD achieves its compression but also applied the deduplication process I described above.

As a further example for 9 variants of FF7 which is about 18 gigabytes, once my application is done the archive clocked to about 1.4 gigabytes.

Each mode verifies data integrity prior to compression and when the file is decompressed. The regular mode uses sh512 to verify each file prior to compression and as a file is decompressed uses the chunk hash to verify each chunk.

The same is also applied to the disc mode. The disc is virtually rebuilt, sha512 hashed and verified to match the hash of the original disc file prior to compression.

If the verification prior to compression fails, it will notify you and cancel the compression process. If it fails the decompression process it will cancel that process as well and notify you.

I spent a lot of time on this... Probably more than I should have since it distracted me from things I needed to work on for a business/service I am hoping to get off the ground in the next couple years though at least this software will likely be used by that endeavor so no a complete loss. I even made a software spec prior to building it as part of a learning exercise since my job as an engineer I was doing a lot of technical writing at the time though I made the mistake of not keeping it updated as things changed (lesson learned there).

Anyway enough of my story as it's not important. I like myrient. I used it here and there for games I own but can't play anymore due to failed hardware. I even have donated twice last year since helped me research the potential of sprite shrink. There's so much to be preserved so if what I made helps I'm all for it. Feel free to try it. If not no biggie!

If anyone asks why the repo seems stagnant, it's because my focus is elsewhere right now. It reached enough of a functional stage I am satisfied with it though I do intend on returning to it.

hi all,

recently, we've started to see a lot of repeat questions, specifically ones about if direct downloads will ever be available. to address these, we've updated the faq. it's on the subreddit sidebar.

A few things I can't seem to figure out and been on the discord since second day.

1. So the minerva project has a 400+tb repo that is accepting all the downloads from the script?

2. Is a new script even needed, the data hoarders likely have 90% of everything now.

3. is there going to be a new site like myrient for public access?

4. (not serious) what's with all these announcements that are just hot air. :)

Just spoonfeed me a brief quick explanation and I'll see what I can do. Have a lot of drives not being used. I heard about something called JDownloader, is it as simple as pasting in URLs and leaving it to download?

QUICK. ITS SHUTTING DOWN SO I NEED TO SAVE IT

theres recently been a like 5-hour old community of people over at working to get people to pitch in their storage to make a myrient mirror

you can check that out, a bunch of people with hard drive space working to mirror its files/download it that way myrient doesnt die out

EDIT: contest is now OVER. thanks to all who participated, winners will be announced soon

we are having a logo contest for the minerva backup effort. to submit something, submit your artwork to the logo-contest channel on discord.

guidelines:

NO AI GENERATED ART. AT ALL.

png/jpg/svg image format.

submit artwork with a 512x512 resolution.

winners are selected from the top five most voted post (you can vote for post by reacting with the discord thumbs up emoji)

deadline: monday, 12:59 pm utc.

legal: By submitting, you acknowledge that your work is original and you grant the Minerva Archive and its affiliates a perpetual, royalty-free license to use, adapt, and distribute the image for any project needs without compensation, similar to a Creative Commons license.

The main purple we use on the website is #A78DF8 and the closest color pallete to complement it would be Catppuccin Macchiato.

After Seeing Myrient announce its shutdown ive been planning to get a massive HDD Bank to save as much as possible but I want to know what are the priority roms we should backup no matter what?

Hey, I am fairly new and thanks to Myrient a found some childhood gems I tought was lost to the void.

I want to help, but I also saw that no download managers. I just want proper instruction how to help out correctly.

Hi guys, as the title says, I can help creating the new web and systems behind, is there a way to help or contribute to the development?

how long has myrient been around? why/how was it created? (looking for any more specifcs past "to help.")

Hi,

I just want to know if Xbox 360 and PS3.isos will be saved ? (OG Xbox also)

Thanks

I have around 5tb that I can d/l games to.

What can I do to help the cause…?

&

How is the cause going…?

I don't have a very powerful computer, or a lot of storage but i just want to help at least a bit to preserve Myrient's legacy, but i don't know how

I've got around 40ish TiB of redundant HDD storage on my NAS, are there specific directories that still need downloading?

Somewhere in the range of 5 downloads per day or on a weekly basis. Sorry, I'm clueless about a lot of this stuff but as a solution for the "data miners". Vimm's Lair does something similar, the difference is the site restricts multiple downloads. I honestly don't see why anyone would need more than 5 downloads on any given day unless they're hoarding.

just wondering this as owns myrient+hshop

I have this idea where a load of us downloads sectors of myrient across each of our devices, and later collectively upload to internet archive or something. I.e. some of us take care of the GameCube, some the PS2, etc. if you’re so ballsy you have a petabyte of storage, please help us. This is one way to save it if keeping the site alive isn’t an option. Please consider this and do all you can. I’ll fill up my terabyte of HDDs to help, you can too. Let’s keep myrient alive together. And no, this is not an AI generated post.

We are going to use the 400tb estimate for Myrient's size.

Considering the price per terabyte for enterprise grade, perhaps factory recertified (e.g. 20tb EXOS) disks can go anywhere from $20 to $25¹, I would say, not including backups or even RAID, that the hard drives needed would cost around 8 to 10 grand.

Backups would be best managed by LTO drives. An LTO8 drive seems to go for about 3 to 4 grand², and the tapes can hold 30tb of data (compressed). we would need 14 tapes, each costing around 65 bucks³ (so about $910, at that price I would make a double backup, so $1820), meaning an LTO8 solution would cost about $4-5k for a single backup or $5-6k for a double backup. If the drive was lent, you could save 3 to 4 thousand dollars. I'm sure there are data hoarders out there that will gladly lend you their LTO 8/9 drives, saving you a lot of money. On the other hand, having the LTO drive makes it to where if a drive fails, you don't need to rely on a lending/rental to bring back the files, greatly reducing downtime for those files lost (but that could be relegated to a future purchase).

IDK much about RAID, but I'm thinking it would add like $3k-5k to this project, any RAID people want to chime in with the best RAID solution, and the extra cost/drives needed for using RAID?

So, just for storage alone, we're looking at around $12,000 to $16,000 dollars (depending on the price of drives, and if you are doing a double backup on LTO (which adds $1000, but seems worth it if possible). If the LTO drive was lent or rented, you can cut $3k-$4k off of the project, making the price $9000-$12000

Bandwidth is another consideration, but you could hopefully get away with self-hosting and using a synchronous business internet plan with 1-2Gbps upload if you implement measures to keep bandwidth abuse at bay. A (non-bypassable) speed cap for this new Myrient would be absolutely imperative (I feel 10mbps would be reasonable, lower it if it gets overloaded). It may be much slower than the current Myrient, but it's better that it's accessible than gone.

The 1-2gbps synchronous plan would add about $150-$200 per month⁴. 10gbps upload would be preferable, but would probably be at least 5x more expensive per month (based on US prices). Anyway, hosting in the US or another DMCA country would not be the best idea anyway unless your OPSEC is bulletproof, you would also need a BS excuse as to why you are using so much bandwidth. The best option would be a country that can treat DMCAs like TP, but has good internet.

It'd still be a good idea to encrypt all files, and perhaps even use password-protected encrypted zip, 7z, rar etc. files with a semi-obscured password, maybe have the passwords behind a captcha to prevent bot downloaders (and maybe put them in base 64 too, if people have to jump through a few hoops, it will mean that people will have to want the ROMs/packs they download [and they will use Myrient for the obscure stuff, and use easier methods for easy to find ROMs]).

Maybe you could choose a location next to a seedbox or VPN provider that runs their own ISP, and work out a deal to connect directly to their network for a flat rate of like $200-$400 a month (maybe an advertising deal could drive down the price, especially since those into ROMs also tend to be into torrents and VPNs as well).

Another option is to get in touch with the heads of Myrient and talk about the possibility of a "corporate self-hosted restructuring" turning it into a self-hosted service in the same location Myrient is currently in. I believe right now they use rented servers and pay for the bandwidth as needed (which obviously was the wrong choice) It could be a lot cheaper if it were self-hosted on site (no server rentals needed) with a much more affordable, flat rate, at least 1gbps, business-grade, synchronous internet plan (no extra cost for high bandwidth, just slower speeds for the users), along with supplying the funding and parts necessary for this "restructuring".

Hopefully a rich data hoarder with the ability to host in a country that doesn't care about DMCA (or has really, really good, bulletproof, lawsuit-tight OPSEC) will see this and step up to the plate. Or maybe we could do a GoFundYourself or whatever (as long as we can find a trusted person/group, who is willing to self-host this, who is in a location with gigabit plus upload speed plans and preferably no DMCA, and who is really good with technology).

NEW FEATURE IDEAS

A clean and easy to use UI/UX frontend would be great, and I would add a few features. Obviously, things like searching, and an easy to see "Help Us Out!" button with donations as well as other options to help out. such as watching ads and filling out surveys etc.

Kind and Patient Downloading - Queues up your downloads in a list to where it will download when bandwidth isn't too high, and download at lower speeds (you could select how long you are willing to wait for these files, from an hour to a week).

Myrient Nodes - IDK if this can be implemented safely, but if it can, then it would be a downloadable program for Windows, Mac and Linux that would connect your PC/ROMs folder to Myrient's server, scan for Myrient ROMs, and would enable Myrient users to download any ROMs, that you have and they want, directly from your PC/internet connection instead of directly from Myrient. I guess it'd work like SoulSeek (don't worry, the program would institute hash checks to make sure the files are exactly the same and no risk of malware)

Myria Energy and Myrient Level - A point/currency system and a leveling system gained by donating, watching ads, surveys, using Kind and Patient Downloading, and Myrient Nodes. This could be spent on queuing up lists of multiple ROMs to download instantly (well, as instant as 10mbps can get, unless there is an available Myrient Node that has the ROM), getting higher priority, and higher user/forum status, idk, just give incentives to kind users.

¹ According to prices seen on places like ServerPartDeals, Amazon and other online retailers.

² Based on online retailers, and the price of used LTO8 drives on eBay.

³ Based on single-unit prices on sites such as tapeandmedia.com, magstor.com and hpe.com.

⁴ Internet prices vary widely between locations, these prices are based off of US prices from various businesses ISPs, for example, Verizon's plan is $150 for synchronous 1 gig and $180 for synchronous 2 gig business internet.

i came here from a post in and firstly want to express my immense gratitude for people who try to make media more accessible using their own resources.

however, i heard the website was primarily for distributing ROMs, and don't know what type of game that is supposed to be. somebody said it was emulator-related, and i have downloaded many SNES games in rom form, but i'm wondering if there are other specific platforms that myrient documents, like uhhh NES? gameboy? is it generally about video games published before 2000? what are some iconic games that i should try?

thanks

I would like to volunteer when I am available, so I installed Minerva on my HDD. However, I noticed Minerva still uses my SSD (boot drive) to download things, and with a project as big as this, that is NOT a good thing to do, with the memory prices and all that. I am not well-versed with Python, and would like some assistance in configuring the download folder so it goes direct to my HDD, not my SSD. Thanks in advance.

I was trying to join the discord to either help out or just stay informed but the invites are currently paused, just was curious why.