Need to archive my cd collection to external drive using iTunes

Could someone please answer the question I asked? I am not here to conduct a yard sale and questions about what i'm going to do with my cd collection are not helpful. i am really anxious to get the info on how to archive my collection. What I do with my old cds are my business. I have to move and I have to much STUFF. I should not have to explain all that to be given the steps on how to archive my cd collection and my vinyl albums and tapes. Is there some aspect of my question I haven't considered as to why I'm getting responses like 'what are you going to do with it?" People backup their old hard discs all the time without being quizzed about it. This is the second thread i've posted about this problem and no one has offered the answer though i am sure there are people who know how to do this.

Look, I am a musician too, and I did not ask for your sermon about how many times someone gets "income". I will personally destroy the disks after archiving to satisfy you but I must get rid of them to have more space and *even if I were to keep them* I still need the answer to how to archive them because of many reasons and you cannot force me to rely on the hard copies if I find them hard to keep in order in my house. Please stop interrupting my thread and giving people the misimpression that someone is trying to provide a solution, because your answers are extremely unhelpful. Please go to someone else's thread and allow someone who wants to help me to help me, please. The fact that there are used cds and vinyl records out on the market is not your job to remedy in .Mac any more than the fact there is a used car or antique market out there is your job to stop either. I have not decided what I'm doing with them other than I need to archive them. I could destroy them, keep them, or give them away but it's none of your business to decide for me what I am to do with them and I can guarantee you I'm not selling them not that it is your business.

A friend has told me that I may need to use the OPTION key and launch iTunes or drag an iTunes library over from the hard drive. Could someone please help me with this and ignore the person trying to disrupt my thread?

I've been told by a friend he gave up on the apple forums here long ago because he never would find anyone responding to even simple questions but I am hoping my friend who said that is wrong.

I am asking you to go and disrupt someone else's thread, Francis. Thanks.

If you do not wish to help me, please harass someone else. All I asked is how to archive my cd and vinyl collection. I could care less whether you like it or not that I want to do that. I do not have the rest of my life to prove to you I have destroyed my cd's after I archive them or that I've kept them. I just wish you would leave me alone and allow other people to answer.

Don't you have a life other than playing RIAA spokesperson? I do not have to guarantee you a darn thing about whether I continue to keep my cds later since I have no idea for sure what I want to do with them later. I mainly want to know how to archive them. People post about this on the internet all the time. Most are not harangued by people trying to sermonize about the dangers of what might happen were I to give away my cds or throw them out. It simply is not your business. Please go and harass others.

Could someone who tries to help others please help me with this archiving question?

Please leave me alone. Go harass someone else's thread instead of mine.

Please go away and bother someone else. I have asked you to cease harassing my thread. Please go and respond to others.

yes, that's what I was thinking would be good to do too. But I worry I'm going to really eat up a hard drive fast saving these as AIFF. I'm trying to move toward just hard drive and iPod only in the future so as to be able to get straight to the music and not have to deal with more "stuff" all over my apartment. I'm interested to know about compressed v. uncompressed though. I guess if I make this move, I'll very rarely have any need to use a cd player again in my car and stereo. Maybe I'll miss some quality by going from iPod to stereo/car but I can't deal with all the clutter any more. Same with my vinyl collection. Only in the case of a handful of personal items by my own band or friends will I keep original vinyl and cd copies.