Digital Stream, Is it to soon to make the switch??

Of course you need to backup. I would recommend that you store your music on a RAID 1 (mirror) array and have a separate hard drive that you perform backups to every couple of weeks.

I'm currently ripping my CD collection to external 1TB drive. I'm planning to get second identical drive for backup and keep it at work (in case of theft, fire etc.) External drives are cheap now - i paid less than $100 for 1TB Fantom Drive (metal case, quiet)

If you use an application designed to do backups the only time doing it is a pain is the first time you back up a really large drive full of music, and that's only because it takes a very long time and you'll get tired of checking to see whether it's done.

After that, any good backup program will make incremental backups, copying only what's new and deleting anything you've put in the trash.

Just fire up the drives once a week, launch the backup application and you'll never lose more than a week's worth of ripping. I do it every Saturday morning when I get up and check my mail. It seldom takes more than 15 minutes and I don't have to do anything after it starts.

Try this perspective - at least with a hard drive system you can easily make a backup copy.

You can do that with CDs, but it is a lot more time and work plus more storage space.

As for vinyl, what's the game plan if you have a fire at your home or burglars steal or vandalize your collection? I've had more than one friend who has lost a significant number of LPs stored in their basement from sewer backup.

I keep two backups of the music on my server. I keep one in a different room at home and another off-premises. If I somehow lose all three at once I figure I've got bigger problems in my life to deal with.