Nowadays I buy digital music (mostly via Bandcamp but there’s also HDTracks, Qobuz, etc.) & play the music that way. Can also stream my own music library if I want via Jellyfin or other applications.
re: physical CDs, yes I’ve got a ton of those too from before you could buy digital music but have already ripped them. Haven’t had a need to touch the physical discs in years but still keep them in CD binders just in case.
Also not sure if it matters but for me I’m always living in small apartments/rooms so I absolutely avoid collecting physical items, there’s just no space for that.
Should be fine, just don’t cheap out on the external drive / cable you will be using. And when you’re using something like smartctl you’ll know right away if SMART info is passing through your USB for proper testing.
I’ve done a lot of these type of scans via USB drives, honestly the more annoying part is that some USB drives do wonky things like go into sleep mode within 1-5 minutes which will disrupt any sort of scanning you had going. So with USB drive scanning I usually implement something to keep the drive alive and awake e.g. a simple infinite loop script to write a file every x seconds, or if you’re on windows you can also use KeepAliveHD.