I’ve gotten to the point that the jewel cases for my CD collection is taking up way too much room, so my son and I emptied all the discs and liner notes. I’m good with putting the discs in storage books, but have any of you just put all of your music on an external hard drive?

I’m thinking a 2TB drive would be sufficient as I have about 1500 CDs.

I do for every CD I have ~ approx 900.
Plus several are downloads.

Size will vary depending on the format.
I ripped them using FLAC lossless and most with no compression.
More compression will use less space.

My space used so far is 600GB.

So 2TB will be fine.

Just be sure to have and regularly back them up as it took me many hours to rip them all.
But well worth it.

Now I just serve them with a DLNA server app on my NAS and play them back through my computers and other devices.

For my car I copy to flash drives and play it through my Alpine car stereo.

Your options are endless with file archiving.

And you are not locked in to a self-serving propriety format like what Apple does to people.

Good Luck.

Exact Audio Copy is the program I use to rip them. I rip everything to .FLAC a lossless format.
If you have not done your DVDs and BluRays probably a good idea to do the same.
I use Make MKV for videos.

May as well get a 4TB drive they are under $100. You can also setup Plex Media Server and you’ll have access to all your movies and music across all your platform.

I still buy everything on disk and rip it as soon as it arrives then store aways the physical copy.

I'm a bit of a belt and suspenders person. And I have a lot of hard drive space (regularly backed up).

I rip using Exact Audio Copy to WAV files (lossless, but big). Then I encode to MP3 and make sure the tags are correct.

Having said that, I used to buy a fair amount of CDs, but I haven't recently. I don't even listen to them all that much any more. So I find myself asking why....

EAC is the way to go.

Consider buying at least a 4TB drive.

CD players are going the way of the dodo so better put together your ripping machine while parts are still easy finds and available.

It goes quite fast as soon as you pick your pace. Looks like a nightmare when you look at the amount of CDs you have and the task ahead but it’s not, and it’s well worth your trouble.

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I did exactly that years ago. I have 1 copy on my server, 1 copy on the computer I used to rip them on, and 1 copy as a master. I keep the master off site when I travel lest something bad occurs at the homestead. My friend in IT told me that if there aren’t 3 copies, it ain’t backed up! I get a chuckle when I look at the random play info and I see I have over 39 days of tunes. I also follow the same protocol for my photos.

quote:

Originally posted by IntrepidTraveler:

I rip using Exact Audio Copy to WAV files (lossless, but big). Then I encode to MP3 and make sure the tags are correct.

MP3 Sound quality is quite poor compared to the disc or lossless so I quit ripping to it.

Besides Exact Audio Copy there are others.
I use dbPowerAmp CD Ripper which is fantastic.

https://www.dbpoweramp.com/

It is part of an excellent suite of tools.

https://secure.dbpoweramp.com/...697DE30389E4B15ECFC4

Illustrate (dbPowerAmp) is the company which offer Audio File Converter, CD Ripper, Perfect Tunes (Album Art)/ID Tags/De-Dup/Accurate Rip (error checker), Tunevision media synchronization and a Batch Ripper.

https://forum.dbpoweramp.com/

I mainly user the CD Ripper, PerfectTunes and the Asset Upnp.

All exceptional products.

As far as media type the WAV is exceptional but a very large file.
FLAC is considered an audiophile standard and offers some file-size relief with compression that does not affect audio quality.
MP3 a substandard format but popular with portable devices and streaming to reduce bandwidth or file size.