Addenda: the CD standard is 74 minutes, at 650 mb's a disc, which averages out to about 8.78 meg's of file size for each minute. I'd personally make some safeties after getting them on the hard drive and before any sort of editing, so go out and grab some extra CD-R's or RW's.
Thank you for that information. I'm anxious to get started on this project, but it'll have to wait a few more weeks. Your tips about file formats will help. Thanks!