I want to copy all my CDs to an ipod, and sell or trade my CDs; any risks or downsides? (hard drive crash etc)

I want to free up room in my house, and am considering ripping all my CDs to the ipod, and either selling them or trading them. I have not used itunes very much, but what are the downsides? Obvisouly, if my hard drive crashed, i could lose my library, but I assume i could back it up on a second hard drive. Anything else i should consider?

Well, for one, CD’s have a much better audio quality than most audio files on one’s computer. If I were you, I’d go to Best Buy or Circuit City, get yourself a nice big external hard drive, rip your CDs at a high bit rate, like 256 kbps, and import it in mp3, that way you’ll never have a file compatibility issue. And then just put your music on the external hard drive. This way, if your computer were to crash (it does happen), you’ll still have all of your music on the external hard drive.

Hope this helps.

-Kevin

PS. You can’t import your music from to your computer from your iPod very easily, despite what Alex may think.