There is a type of cd copying system that is designed to pull cd's off a spindle for writing. It is usually hooked up to a rack of burners for commercial disk copying/.manufacturing. I would think that it would be fairly easy to write a script to reverse the process and make the sources autoload and the output be a single hard disk. As far as price, I haven't looked into it in several years, but I suspect a used system could probably be had in that range. The robotic changer is what you are interested in. The higher end systems are designed to load many burners at once, but you really only need a single reader. Then every hundredth disk maybe you would load another 100 onto a spindle and start the machine again. The computer itself doesn't need alot of juice. Only enough to control the two drives and the arm. An old system with a decent 7200 or 10000rpm SCSI HD and a fast SCSI cdr would do the trick. Think SCSI for fast dedicated BUS and controller. The scripting may be the $$ item, unless you can handle it in-house
This question was closed off-topic on Server Fault, so hopefully this is a better place for it. – Kyle Renfro – 2011-11-04T20:34:24.220
Flagging -a shopping or buying recommendation. Please read the FAQs
– wizlog – 2011-11-04T21:00:33.530Bit by bit. Regards, – Xavierjazz – 2011-11-04T21:44:06.167
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@wizlog: This isn't off-topic because it involves a specialized piece of equipment. See this Super User Meta post: In defense of obscure, niche hardware recommendation questions.
– bwDraco – 2011-11-04T21:46:39.393