Ripping CD's to hard drive

FLAC. It's lossless. What goes in, comes out and it doesn't waste space like uncompressed lossless formats, like WAV. Any ripping software will work because the compression algorithm is a standard.

As a former software engineer who has written compression algorithms, once you understand how compression, decompression and bits work, you don't worry about this kind of stuff. You just do what's most efficient.

Absolutely do NOT rip your CDs into MP3 or any other lossy format.  That is a complete waste of your time relative to the cost of storage, unless you get paid at 1950s minimum wage.  

This is not a knock on anyone would listens to MP3s.  But as a decision for storage starting from square one it's a ridiculously bad suggestion.  

You don't need an overly expensive specialty device like Innuous.  All you need is pretty much any computer from the last 25 years (more recent would be better!) and an internal or external CD-Rom, albeit newer and faster is better.  

Then, my votes are Foobar, Exact Audio Copy, DBPowerAmp.  Roughly the same other than EAC is the most sophisticated and hardest to configure. 

Rip into FLAC.  It's the lossless standard that includes reliable metadata handling. \

While there are other viable options for sure, this is the standard way to do things.  Don't follow someone else's off-the-trail opinion until you know what you are doing.  If you are a newbie, do the standard.  This is that thing. 

@kidcreole123   (off topic)

hey kid, how are the coconuts doing? I was a big fan of August and the ladies in the eighties. Still listening to their unique style of music.

Best, eagledriver

+1 FLAC 

+1 dbPoweramp 

I tried all sorts of formats and ripping tools before I finally settled on these and they made the entire process so much better and faster.  For someone like me that placed a lot of emphasis on accuracy when ripping, dbPoweramp worked extremely well and aided my ability to edit metadata and select artwork. These are things that may seem unimportant early on but reveal themselves to be valuable later.  
Full disclosure: I finished ripping my roughly 3,000 CDs a few years ago, so I’m not up to speed on the latest tech. 

I would also recommend that you keep at least one additional drive as a backup for all your music files, so that your investment in time and effort is protected.