Here's my problem: before 2006, I did not know about offset correction nor the CRC test & copy modes in EAC. I extracted & FLACed some 200+ CDs and put them onto CD-Rs between 2004 & early 2006 and now, am looking to put the existing data onto DVD-Rs for better storage of this data. The problem is: back then, I had a different extracting drive (actually a few drives) and never used any offset correction nor have any logs of the rips.

Is this just as good as having no rip at all? I will be moving in less than a month & will not be able to take all those discs with me (they will remain where I currently am). What should I do about this? What would you do?

Thanks...

same as me except i have time to re-rip them

Well if you've had these present rips for a couple years now, and you've been listening to them, and you've not had any problems with them then I'd say just keep them. If getting 100% verifiably 'perfect' rips is what you really felt you need you wouldn't have waited this long to re-rip those discs, you've just got this nagging bit of doubt bugging you that you wouldn't even have if you'd never heard of test+copy and CRC checks and such. Sort of an ignorance is bliss situation.

Plus, I assume you'd still own the discs and that they'd just be stored away somewhere while you're off living somewhere else, and thus while not so readily accessible as having them actually with you they'd still be available in a pinch (and some patience, and postage costs). If you happen to come across a problem, just get someone to mail you the disc in question for a fresh rip.

Going off-topic, but pertaining to the reason why I dread re-ripping all of these: even the new EAC seems to crash on my PC. I don't know how much information I need to give out, but I get no blue screen (I get a black one with my mouse frozen in it), I have two drives: a Plextor PX-760A & a Lite-on 18-A1HP (or whatever that 18x DVD model is). I'm running this on XP SP2. The problem has been around in some way for at least 2 years (just before EAC would appear, my OS sometimes crashes, forcing me to hard-reboot). I re-installed XP on 2006-10-30, so this has been going on for quite some time (before re-installing). I used to get a blue screen (the type used with hardware conflicts in XP). I just don't know what to look for nor how to stop this.

Secondly, depending on which disc I am trying to rip(condition doesn't matter much), I either get secure rips at 5--11x or at super-slow 2--4x! This makes doing the T&C process even longer on many discs I rip. I get this problem even on new discs - just seems to do it randomly but always the same speed on the same disc.

Don't rip them again they are fine.

If you ripped them with secure mode back then and made sure there were no errors, i don't see why you should re-rip everything. Missing offset correction doesn't warrant it.

Regarding computer instability, this sounds to me like a job for Prime95 and memtest86.

Find out if you have a hardware problem, and what hardware is failing. Just the other day my machine failed Prime95 within a few minutes. Then I cleaned my CPU cooler, which dropped the temperature by 14 degrees, and Prime95 ran stable all day long. Not saying that's your problem, but you probably need to diagnose your hardware.

On a sidenote: you might want to consider buying a USB2IDE adapter and a cheap hard drive for the rips.

About 600 CDs fit on a 200GB disc. So a cheap 100GB drive should be enough for your purpose.

Well this problem happens only when I try to load EAC & it is only sometimes (more like 40 % now). I have around 5 other burning programs on my OS & there have been no problems like this with them. What's unique about EAC & what does it load up that other programs don't?

I had a problem with my PC where the output of FLAC conversions would fail to verify. Just copying FLAC files from a DVD or off my local network would cause them to become corrupt. Not a good thing at all!!! I also suffered intermittent app and system crashes (rarely, but they did occur).

The problem was due to a bad memory module! I didn't use memtest86, but another free memory checker (I forget the name).

Memory problems manifest themselves in odd ways. It all depends on memory usage on the system, how many processes are running, what order processes were started in, etc.

The point is that the issue may not be specific to EAC though it may seem to be. I would highly recommend running a memory diagnostic to rule that out.

Regarding whether or not you should rerip - if you've been happy with the files you have up until now, I would say there it no need to rerip. Usually, offset issues aren't noticable unless they are compounded over generations of rips (i.e. a rip of and audio disc which is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, etc.). Through the generations of copies, offsets issues become quite exagerated.

For any rips that you do in the future, you could apply your new knowledge and apply offsets, collect logs, do CRC checks, etc.