With the software's help, you can use iPad, iPhone, iPod as a USB flash drive to copy, add, remove. You still will need some kind of arrangement for backup, either a second external drive or online backup. iStonsoft iPad/iPhone/iPod Disk Mode for Mac is developed to use iOS device as a storage device. Big names in network-attached storage include Synology, D-Link, Buffalo, QNAP, and others. This provides redundancy when ( not if) one of the drives fails. Get some kind of external (USB) or network-attached drive enclosure with at least two, and preferably four, drives that can be configured by the hardware as some level of RAID. I don't know what a 'superdrive' is, but if it's not a multidrive enclosure with RAID, I wouldn't use it for a big project like yours.
I have 3 options (2 external, 1 internal), and that has cut the number of rips with errors down to almost nothing. That way, when a rip comes up with errors, you can try those tracks again with a different drive. If you want error-free rips, you might be happy to have more than one, from different manufacturers. Regarding optical drives, you are correct that they fail quickly. I wrote the following before I realized you are talking about an optical drive for ripping, not a magnetic drive for storage. Professional desktop storage device offers 8TB of reliable hard drive space Universally compatible with Mac and PC computers, including support for USB 3.0.
