Tech Wish: Automated CD Reader

I would love to see a product that could read several CDs into a computer with no human intervention. One could process data on several CDs without having to load each one manually.

This would be useful for anyone with a large collection of CDs which they want to backup or catalog. At work we have hundreds of CD-Rs burned with images and other files. They are in various states of organization (mostly disorganized). I could easily write a script that would read the data off of each one and catalog it using Extensis Portfolio or something similar. The problem is that I would have to manually change each one and wait for it to read; probably a full day or two of excruciatingly boring work, which would be difficult to get anyone to do, since they don’t know the system the way I do.

It would also be useful for backing up an entire music collection. One could put all of their CDs in one night and come back with many gigabytes of mp3 or ogg music files. One could then burn that onto DVDs or some other backup medium.

I have not seen a product like this anywhere on the internet. I have seen plenty of automated CD writers but no readers. I assume this device would be fairly expensive since it would be an niche product and would have to incorporate an expensive mechanism for changing the CDs. However, it would be a great product to rent. One could use it to catalog a large collection for a day or two and then rent it again when their collection increased.