Better to rip CDs to a hard disk or to CD-Rs?

[tone]

My girlfriend has a good CD collection and I also want to have all my music in one place.

Is it a better idea for longevity and sound quality to rip all the CDs onto an external hard drive instead of blank CDs that will scratch and degrade pretty quickly?

If they were ripped into .Wav files on the hard disk would the quality be as good as the actuall CD? ( silly question which i can guess the answer)

thanks so much!

 

[BigH]

I would rip to HD, don't see the point of ripping to ccd-Rs, how are you going to play them?

 

[BigH]

I would rip to HD, don't see the point of ripping to ccd-Rs, how are you going to play them? SQ from HD should as good or maybe even better depending what software you use.

 

[chebby]

HD (and another external backup HD for backup).

 

[steve_1979]

Is it a better idea for longevity and sound quality to rip all the CDs onto an external hard drive instead of blank CDs that will scratch and degrade pretty quickly?

The sound quality of both will be identical. But ripping to a hard drive is less hassle and would make the files easier to manage or copy in the future.

If they were ripped into .Wav files on the hard disk would the quality be as good as the actuall CD? ( silly question which i can guess the answer)

thanks so much!

Yes WAV is a lossless format so will be the same as the original CD. The problem with WAV files is they don't support tagging and other metadata. You'd be better off using another lossless format such as FLAC or ALAC because they support metadata and also take up less space while still being lossless.

 

[steve_1979]

HD (and another external backup HD for backup).

Yes, good point chebby. It's best to make a backup. It's all to easy to delete/currupt/lose stored data and if you have a backup it'll save you having to re-rip all of those disks again which can take ages to do.

Also check that your backup actually works! It isn't uncommon for people to make a backup of data and then when they need to use it find that it doesn't work for some reason or another. Data isn't properly backed up unless you have at least three (working) copies of it with at least one of those copies being stored in a place off site.

 

[matt49]

Also check that your backup actually works! It isn't uncommon for people to make a backup of data and then when they need to use it find that it doesn't work for some reason or another. Data isn't properly backed up unless you have at least three (working) copies of it with at least one of those copies being stored in a place off site.

+1

Absolutely essential and not an added extra!