Vladimir is right about the hard disk space. I use level 5 compression as I don't find the space savings between 5 and 8 to be that large. I use compression because I couldn't hear any difference between compressed and uncompressed files. Some people say that they can also hear the difference between flac and wav files. I'm not saying there isn't any difference - just that I can't hear it but it may be that my system (or my ears) is not resolving enough. Be that as it may, I think I would choose flac over wav for the tagging capabilities. There are programs that will tag wav files but, as far as I know, the tags are kept separate from the wav files. This may limit portability in the future because there's no standard way of doing this.
In either case you are right to do your research now. Once you have a substantial library of ripped music, you REALLY don't want to have to go back and start over. In this regard backups of your music library are essential as hard drives do fail.
