Ripping!

[MajorFubar]

‎249 CDs consisting of 4,310 songs, running 11 days, 8 hours 49 minutes and 54 seconds all ripped to my Mac Mini's hard drive. Phew. Only around another 100 CDs to go :help:

Think Santa will be bringing me a nice 1TB/2TB external drive to back all this lot up. Not being funny but if that darn computer irrevocably crashes and I lose everything before I get it backed up I'm going to find the nearest tall building and jump!

 

[davejberry]

how did you do it, couple of hours a night?

Did my 600+ CDs to flac in less than ten days, four hours a night or thereabouts. Including the extra time to scan in some cover artwork that dBpoweramp couldn't find on the net. Then set it to make two backup copies, one flac and one mp3 320 for my portables, which it did overnight.

It did help that I have two drives and a multi core processor I suppose!

 

[professorhat]

I'd ask Santa for an advance on that backup drive - yes, it's unlikely you'll have a crash before Christmas, but is it worth the risk for the sake of £65 to £70?

 

[chebby]

Think Santa will be bringing me a nice 1TB/2TB external drive to back all this lot up. Not being funny but if that darn computer irrevocably crashes and I lose everything before I get it backed up I'm going to find the nearest tall building and jump!

Don't wait for Santa.

Get an external drive now, today (remember the law of Sod), and buy this too (£18.95)...

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

...it works. I know it works and it's very easy. I have successfully used it to recover my iMac system (after a new HDD had to be installed under Apple Care warranty).

It will backup a complete, bootable clone of your entire system. Recovery (should you ever need it) is easy. Just boot up from the external HD* and then restore. Just a few clicks and cup of tea or two whilst waiting. As I said, very easy.

*To boot from an external drive just connect the drive and hold down the 'option' key whilst powering up. Then use the l/r arrows to select the boot drive in Startup Manager. You can even do it just to re-assure yourself it works (once you've backed up of course).

 

[MajorFubar]

Nice tips everyone, thanks.

how did you do it, couple of hours a night?

Something like that, managing about 10-15 CDs in an evening depending on whether I had to find/scan the artwork as well, and depending on also how fast the CDs ripped. I waned after about three nights, left it for two weeks, then started again for another three nights, and so it carried on. In terms of enjoyable passtimes this must rate alongside having a frontal lobotomy or being asked to empty Loch Ness with a five litre bucket.

 

[Alec]

Scanning them is decicated. I just looked for them online and tooke whatever was closest, or didn't use any when I couldn't find what was exactly right.

I now have several things with the wrong art now though and am deeply confused as to why, but that's by the by.

 

[DavieCee]

Top tip I found out about half way through ripping mine.

If the ripping appears to be going slow, the likely culprit is the built in drive.

I got a relatively cheap external drive and things went much quicker.

 

[VoodooDoctor]

I use the CD cover pictures from Amazon if dbPoweramp doesn't find them.

 

[MajorFubar]

Top tip I found out about half way through ripping mine.

If the ripping appears to be going slow, the likely culprit is the built in drive.

I got a relatively cheap external drive and things went much quicker.

Just what I did from the start, and it's very good advice. Think I bought my USB-powered drive for about £15-20 delivered off ebay. It makes a lot of sense to use a cheap external drive for such an extensive exercise, to prevent wear and tear to the built in unit.

 

[SteveR750]

Scanning them is decicated. I just looked for them online and tooke whatever was closest, or didn't use any when I couldn't find what was exactly right.

I now have several things with the wrong art now though and am deeply confused as to why, but that's by the by.

Thankfully JRMC finds all the artwork automatically for all of my ripped CDs bar a couple. It's pretty quick when you do a manual search

 

[MajorFubar]

Yeah I've been lucky that I've only needed to scan about 3 CDs out of 250 albums, because the artwork just wasn't out there at all. Though as for iTunes automatically finding the artwork, it can be a bit hit-n-miss, and it's isn't even necessarily down to album popularity. For example, no trace of Saturday Night Fever, the third best selling soundtrack-album of all time. Yet I fully expected to have to Google or even scan the artwork for Fox's eponimously-named album from 1975, but no, it appeared instantly during the scan.

 

[whoam1]

Nice tips everyone, thanks.

how did you do it, couple of hours a night?

Something like that, managing about 10-15 CDs in an evening depending on whether I had to find/scan the artwork as well, and depending on also how fast the CDs ripped. I waned after about three nights, left it for two weeks, then started again for another three nights, and so it carried on. In terms of enjoyable passtimes this must rate alongside having a frontal lobotomy or being asked to empty Loch Ness with a five litre bucket.

I lasted about 3 CDs before the whole thing was outsourced.

 

[Alec]

Good call re Amazon for covers.

I'd outsource it but I'm finished now; I'm just ripping as and when I get new stuff. And I want to make various folders (used as playlists rather than using the playlist making function in WMP) and move things around a fair bit, so once ripped, there's lots of tidying to do. Haveing said that, had I outsourced it, I bet I wouldn't be cleaning up artowrk problems and typos, though some discrpencies in naming (REM/R.E.M. etc...) would still be apparent.