What is the simplest way to transfer songs from my CD collection to an external hard drive?

Yes, you need to copy the songs from each CD to your computer using a program like Window Media Player (assuming you have Windows). Then transfer them to the external hard drive.

You could probably just directly copy the songs to the external drive if you want as well. Just set the files to go to the drive instead of your C:\ drive.

Yes. You mentioned you have a Mac previously, right? First thing you need to do is rip out all the songs to the computer with the choice of your own folder. After you’re done with extracting the songs from your CD, just copy them to your external hard-drive! That’s the simple way and I do this a lot. It’s better to rip them to a computer first rather than a external because while ripping your external might get disconnected and it will stop extracting them blah blah.

For a Mac computer – I believe you import them from itunes, pretty simple I guess. Keep in mind you’ll have to change the encoder settings in itunes to MP3 because if you do not you will get them as some other format. Go to preferences and choose under the format settings to mp3. General-import settings-import using mp3. When you enter your Cd a dialouge should pop up asking you if you want to import the CD. If it doesn’t pop out then go to the menu item ‘import’ file-import.
I believe you can select the folder you can import to and in your case you should select the external hard-drive folder.

For a normal windows computer – There’s a rip option on the tabs above on the right and that should be fairly easy. Just click the rip tab or select it from the menu. It will start ripping automatically and will show you the progress of each MP3 file it rips.

I never rip my CD albums using a mac, windows media player works wonders for me in ripping, pm me if you need help!

@erichw1504 If he copies them directly it won’t be mp3? I think, I’m not sure. If it is mp3 then that would be the simplest way ever but I highly doubt that.

CDs are PCM format (unless they are data CDs with MP3s on them). They have to be converted.
The answer depends on which music tools the original poster is most familiar with (WMP, iTunes, etc). Use one of those.

Thanks guys! My song collection were mostly purchased from iTunes years ago. That computer is gone now and I had backed-up the songs by burning them in CD-R’s. So I guess I have to copy them back into my new Mac computer before I could transfer them to an external hard-drive.

Also, how important is it to pay attention to what format these songs would be? I just want them backed-up in an external hard drive and someday be able to transfer them wherever I please. I could not get my head around why songs have to exist in so many different formats. Yeah, I’m dumb and lazy that way.

There should be a way for you to rip them straight to your external hard drive… maybe by changing the location of your library in iTunes? Assuming you’re using iTunes. Look in the preferences. Presumably you’re going to want iTunes to run off your external anyway, so it shouldn’t cause you any grief… unless you’re just creating a backup on the external, and running iTunes off your computer.