Digitising your music collection

[Tiger]

ok i admit it i'm a technophobe who likes techno

anyway some advice from some of you technology savvy peeps out there would be greatly appreciated.

i have probably about 400 cds at home, numerous mp3s on an external hard drive mainly essential mixes and the like. thinking of getting an mp3 player (ipod) to put virtually everything on.

see apple do an ipod with 160GB which looks more than enough space, but i'm wondering what alternatives there are. i remember when ipods first came out then had huge issues with mix cds and put a gap between songs which kind of defeats the object of a mix cd.

also heard some mumblings that itunes doesn't particularly like unlicensed music like mp3 mixes (essential mixes) or friends tracks. also does itunes take up large hard drive space on your computer and make it run slow? thats why i keep all my mixes in an external hard drive.

i know the biggest hassle is going to be actually loading all my cds onto itunes & ipod; and wondered how safely its stored? for example if my computer or ipod gets lost/stolen am i back to square one?

any advice/tips/etc would be graetly appreciated, thanks