Best way to backup audio CDs Options

[androdion]

I'm a CD collector and as such I like to take good care of my collection. I keep them stored at decent temperatures without being exposed to direct sunlight, smoke or moist. Even so there are CDs which you acquire second-handed that weren't treated as good as that and present signs of decay, and by decay I mean "pin holes" and/or "disc rot". Others have been made by pressing plants that have been know to present this problems over time, or are from a time period where manufacturing processes were more rudimentary and didn't take into consideration the possible decay of the CDs.

All of this to say that as a CD collector I do have some old discs that are beginning to present signs of decay and "rotting", so I wanted to make backup copies of them in the best possible way, not to play them from my PC but just to have them backed up in case some of the data on the CDs gets destroyed and lost over time. I've been reading a lot into it and I've became aware of these "gold discs" that are supposed to last 100-200 years or so because gold doesn't rust pure and simple. I have no idea how feasible this option is (to do direct copies into gold discs) and how expensive it would be, so I'd like to for now make the backups into a hard drive and possibly later on record them to that kind of media.

Now a problem arises. How to back them up in digital format? FLAC is the go to format, but wouldn't it be better to save them as an uncompressed WAV with a CUE sheet? What is the best option to back up audio CDs by using EAC?

[androdion]

I already use two distinct HDD to have my MP3 backed up, as well as my documents, photos, etc. My idea was to do the same with the 20+ year old CDs I own to prevent any kind of "age problem" from destroying them permanently. That way I could have a backup stored and "print" a new copy with ease.

So, if I understand correctly what you're both trying to say is that WAV is more likely to be corrupted due to being a contiguous "open" file instead of individual compressed tracks right?! Should I just configure EAC for FLAC then and get over with it? What would be the best settings then? Any guides out there with command line specifications for FLAC compression on EAC?