I'm new at this. I have been getting my CDs onto a hard drive. I'm not disposing of the CDs. I continue to buy them. In fact, I'm probably going to buy more now that the format seems to be sunsetting. Some of my reasons:
1. CDs don't get accidentally erased, harbor viruses, get hijacked like hard drives can.
2. Hard drives have an expected product life of five years. I have CDs as old as 1984. Some don't rip due to scratching, but I can fix that with some plastic scratch remover and polish. A hard drive from 1984? Besides the fact that it would take 50 of them to hold a CD, they're either recycled or in a land fill. CD is an enduring format.
3. MP3s do not sound better. The best you can say is you can't tell the difference, sometimes, at 320.
4. The liner notes and album artwork are a part of the experience. I've learned a lot from classical CD booklets.
Even if I buy some 24/96 or better downloads, I'm tempted to burn them on a DVD-R also, just for safety. Hard drives crash. There are archival class optical media. I'm going to look into some of those, if I'm actually going to use it for a master copy.
That said, it's great being able to click whatever I'm in the mood for, browsing my collection by remote, at no sacrifice in quality over the CD. I'm going to keep ripping, but never surrender my originals.
As far as torrent bootlegs go, I feel guilty, and I get a raft of Adware, Malware and worse from sites I've tried. Maybe you folks have better links?
Scott