Searching it for a song, artist or album takes about 5 seconds. This method has saved me from many duplicate downloads.
NOTE... this drive is NOT my boot drive. I've used about 70 gigs to store my basic collection of around 300 cd's. In about 9 months at the current rate, the drive will be full. In the interim, I plan to add another 100 Gig drive and mirror the first one to it for another layer of safety.
In addition, I added a SCSI card that will allow me to add an additional 7 hard drives of any size.
I burn CD's only for use in the car and so forth. My computer is hooked into my home office stereo, and soon I will port it my main home sound system.
BTW, as a side note, my collection spans from about 1907 (Edison cylinder recordings) to 2001.
Trying to manage a CD collection will drive you nuts.
MusicMatch 7.0 from www.musicmatch.com
They have a free download but the full version is only $19.95 or so.....
it will connect to the CDDB data base and will manage multiple libraries (if you want).
It is orientated towards converting the CDs into mp3 (compressed files) and
enabling you to assemble your own custom CDs (e.g., "mlmr's Best of Sting" and write those onto blank CDRs,
but I am sure that you can use it for the purpose you want. It is a pretty well thought out piece of software.
Good Luck
CobolKing