Don't forget another major reason not to use removable media for archiving: obsolescence.
With all the progress in removable media technology, current mediums are no longer cutting-edge after a very short time. Remember floppy discs? 8", 5.25", 3.5"... then ZIP drives were the in thing, and now you barely see those. CD-Rs and CD-RWs became the in thing, and now those aren't used for data much any more (still for audio use obviously, and perhaps for people with older MP3-CD stereos etc). DVD-Rs and DVD-RWs are standard now (although the whole multiple-layer/side/+/- compatibility thing still confuses me), but they will soon be replaced by higher capacity mediums. Blu-ray looks like the way it is going to go, but who knows how long that will last.
At least with hard drives, the interfaces remain standard long enough that you could easily and quickly transfer data to a newer hard drive as the storage cost reduces. Transferring 1TB of hard drive data could be done in a matter of hours... but the equivalent time it would take to copy the same amount of data off DVDs would be ridiculous, not to mention the amount of space 100-200 DVDs would take up.
I have accumulated a pile of hard drives as I have upgraded my computers... I think I have 10-15 hard drives sitting around (not actually in computers). I usually buy a hard drive with the lowest cost-per-megabyte about once a year, and copy and organise data over as appropriate over a weekend. Data I kept from 10 years ago is still occasionally useful to me, and worth the trouble and cost of keeping it.
By the way cyn, that USB plug is GENIUS.
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