CD storage

[CarlSeibert]

Hmmmm ripping service.

When I did it, I just put every computer in the house in the effort and out didn't take too TERRIBLY long.

of course that was when every computer actually had an optical drive )

[rod]

As far as I am aware ( In the U.K., not sure about the rest of the world but I think it would be the same  )you need to have the physical media , if you sell the c.d. then you  no longer have the right to keep the ripped tracks.

[Kattefjaes]

Honestly, ripping is not onerous, especially if you only have 600 or so.

Get the software properly set up and working, so it doesn't need messing around with and the whole thing is a mindless exercise. Then you can just do a stack per evening, feeding a new one in when the computer sticks its tongue out. Generally, it's just a case of loading the disk in the drive, letting the software look up the disk and then confirming its conclusions with a click. A few minutes of whooshing and whirring later, it will stick its tongue out again- rinse and repeat.

You don't have to do them all at once, but if you crack on and do a healthy stack per evening, you'll soon get through all of it. There will be a few outliers which tragically will no longer play/rip and will need replacing, sod's law will make sure they're the hardest ones to replace, but otherwise, it's fine.

Rip them to FLAC, not a lossy format. Then if you need lossy (e.g. for carrying some emergency soothing music on a sanely-sized phone) you can transcode to lossy on demand.

Incidentally, external USB optical drives are embarrassingly cheap these days and work well.

Edited February 26 by Kattefjaes