Backing up Music and Audio Book CDs Takes Forever!

[Grendel]

We (wife and I) are getting ready to sell and move back south as I have stated in a couple threads. So in the effort to downsize what we move I have decide to rip all of our CDs as WAV files onto a Desktop Raid setup. I forgot how long a boring work it is to rip CDs. I did this for a lot of our music CDs years ago but at differing qualities of MP3 and now that memory is cheap and there are better compressions I decided to this time archive the WAV file and then compress copies for use on devices as needed.

I am going to be at this for days, I have been at it for my audio books and it has taken me large portions of 2 days and I have only done 8 books (~70 discs). Between my wife and I we have over 400 music CDs and that is after I go through the remainder of my audio books (18). Hopefully I will be done by the time the house sells. Get ready for upcoming Yard Sale thread similar to my Military History book thread a couple weeks ago. CDs galore going at bottom prices

[ghilliesuit]

God speed sir - May I suggest ordering a CD binder and throwing away the cases????

[Grendel]

Nope I hate those binders, they have cause me to have to replace many CD over the years (I've been buying them since circa 1987). They scratch the piss out of the plastic and cause discoloration when used long term. Currently they are primarily in their original cases with no real to change that. I bought some Archive storage boxes made for CD/DVDs and they all fit in 2 medium sized boxes both that I can easily lift. They'll go into my office closet for long term storage or conveniently be lost once I'm done backing them up

[ghilliesuit]

Grendel Haha well if you have any heavy metal you wanna lose... let me know what you have

[boarder2k7]

Have you thought of ripping to FLAC instead? Built in lossless compression in an open-source file format.

[Grendel]

I'm keeping this backup set with no compression (WAV) for archive purposes and it actually is the fastest way to rip the CD I did some testing using a few different lossless compressions and the same disc took longer when using compression. Which actually makes sense right now the rip is essentially a straight copy of the audio file where if I did any type of compression there is a post process step (actual compression) that the PC must do before it can write the file to the Hard Drive. I also suspend the raid copy during copying of files so the mirroring does not slow down the completion and I just turn on the raid when I walk away for a while. The loss less formats (FLAC) are really not loss less there is digital compression but I have had pretty good luck with FLAC. That is one of the problems with my MP3 archive I have is I started ripping audio before FLAC even existed and at early versions of MP3 compressions so my archive of "MP3" files is at various compression formats, rates and base volume levels so not a great archive and the big reason I'm starting over so I have clean digital copies for archive then I can compress to an appropriate format when necessary. I really doubt I even need to compress for my car, I currently have a 1TB solid state drive hooked up to my current system.

[Siress]

Well. A service will charge ~$1/disc for this last I checked. So, you're looking at a fair market value of $400 to back these 400 discs up.

My recommendation is to build an automated ripping station. You can do this by temporarily repurposing your current computer, an unused computer, or order super cheap hardware for it.
Software is available for free: https://github.com/automatic-ripping...ipping-machine
See pictures/use-case here: https://b3n.org/automatic-ripping-machine/
Be sure to check the compatibility lists and other limitations.

I'll assume for now that you have a desktop you can temporarily repurpose for this effort. Order as many optical drives as you can attach to your motherboard. Then, use any remaining budget to add SATA expansion cards and populate them with more optical drives. If you use 4 drives, that's a 25% reduction of your involvement. If you use 10 drives, 90% reduction... 20 drives, 95% reduction. Install the OS on a USB drive that you can boot from while this is running. You'll need to access the GUI over your network - which you can do with your phone or laptop.

Good luck!