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"  I recently was out on maternity leave from work so was home for 12 weeks. And while it was a wonderful time to just spend with my son, I did find myself looking for projects to do around the house that may have been moved to the back burner in recent years. So I decided to step into the 21st century and start ripping all of my and my husband&amp;#039;s CDs to digital formats.  Since Skip and I are well into our 30s we started listening to music just when CDs became popular and we have over 500 of them...so I knew this was not going to be a fast or easy project. Plus, we have the problem of computer space-where to keep all of this digital music. We needed to solve this problem before anything else.  Right before going on leave, Western Digital was in our Engineering Lab to show us their new external hard drive: the MyBook II World Edition. I liked this product for my application because it has a REALLY big hard drive (so I knew all of our music would fit), has automatic backup software (which I now need for all of the pictures of the baby), and can be networked (so it can communicate with our PlayStation 3 so we can listen to all of this music through our surround sound system in the den). So we got ourselves one of these drives and connected it in the basement to our wireless router. Setup couldn&amp;#039;t have been easier and not only could I start ripping CDs but I could also save all the pictures of the baby on it and then view them on our big screen TV whenever someone new came over to visit!  To set it up we simply plugged it in, installed the software and followed the steps to backup our files and we were done. So, now that this step is done I was able to move onto the real project of ripping all of our CDs to the computer.  I started with the CDs that are in cases under the sofa. I figured we don&amp;#039;t listen to them because we forget they are there so let&amp;#039;s start with them and start enjoying all of this music again. I pulled out the first case, which held 60 CDs and thought that it shouldn&amp;#039;t take too long. Well I was wrong! Each CD takes about 5 minutes to rip. Then you have to eject it, put the case away, take out the next one, wait 5 minutes and repeat. Which really doesn&amp;#039;t seem like a lot but I ended up doing this as well as 10 other things and the first case of CDs took a whole day to get through. And this is just 60 CDs and remember I have over 500 to do!!!   My converting all of our music to digital files is almost complete and it has been frustrating. My kitchen, which is where our computer is, has been a constant mess of piles of CDs waiting to be ripped, open CD cases that are in the computer and storage cases for the CDs that have already been completed. And while I&amp;#039;m very happy that I&amp;#039;ve done this project, I&amp;#039;m ready for it to be over and for my kitchen to be neat again.  One of the biggest benefits of this project, which I didn&amp;#039;t anticipate when I started, was how much space I now have in our den for other stuff! Our entertainment center has three drawers which were full of CDs; we have two 2&amp;#039; long shelves on the walls that were full of CDs, plus all of the CDs under the sofa and on top of the CD player that we were always listening to. Now all of that space is empty!!!! I almost don&amp;#039;t know what to do with it all. The room looks barren to be honest with the shelves empty and the entertainment center neat and clean. Plus, what do I put in the drawers now? I put our DVDs on the shelves so I don&amp;#039;t even have those for the drawers...it really is amazing how much room I have and I&amp;#039;m sure I will find something to fill it with! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/institute/a22388/converting-cds-to-mp3/>