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I have a bunch of backed up DVD's that I want to copy to my new 1TB hard drives. What would be the best way to transfer these? These are already ripped.
1. Manually, one by one, this would take a few months.
2. Connect 8 cheap Sata DVD drives to my Mobo and copy all at once. Something cheap like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118031. This would cost me about $160+s/h. I could sell them on eBay for a few bucks when I'm done. This is assuming my Core 2 Duo E8500 with 2 GBs of ram can keep up with 8 drives. CPU resources are at 1% with one drive while copying. I guess the bigger question would be if my Asus P5QC and its Sata(3.0Gb/s) ports would hold up.
Any other ideas?
Depending on how soon you plan on watching the ripped DVDs, there's no reason to break the bank to get a huge array of readers to rip the DVDs. I have ripped multiple DVDs simultaneously on the same PC in the past using AnyDVD HD so I know it can be done.
If you're intent on doing this, you might want to consider the following drive instead:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118030
It's a DVD burner of the same make but it comes with free shipping, making the price differential only about $1 per drive. You'll have a better chance of selling a DVD burner than a plain DVD-ROM drive. I've been using the Sony Optiarc drives for several years and absolutely love them. The read speed is only slightly slower than the reader (16X vs. 18X), but you have far more flexibility with the burner.