Portability? I'm pretty sure that an external hard drive is more portable than the equivalent data burned to CDs/DVDs. Optical media is good if you want to give someone some data and you don't want it back, and they're convenient to boot from, but that's pretty much it. Optical media is definitely on the way out.
I pretty much gave up on CDs and DVD's a while back.
They present a lot of problems in reliability, you can record something and find a few years later the data is gone.
As I said my 500gig drive could hold as much as 700 if my figures are right.
OK it would be mainly DVDs these days and what are they about 5 gig each, that's still a stack of 100.
I have burned some stuff to DVD occasionally but i never tend to use them again as i am to lazy to sort through then and find them, what you wrote on it 2 years ago might make little sense now. On a hard drive it's easy to list and play a sample or whatever.
Then there is the hassle of putting them in cases, not scratching them etc..
Also what is the point of having stuff on CD when it is usually a click away on the web? on youtube for example?
To tell the truth I hardly ever use my USB drive either, so not only is optical media dead, magnetic media is dying too!!
High speed internet kills them both off.
I mean things like the Ipad or whatever will be more of the future way to go.
What is the point of millions of people having their own copies of stuff?
Even if it is personal stuff you could upload it to a server.
I remember a professor at uni predicting that we would all eventually move to
getting out data from a central server, I though he was mad but I think he is right now.
As for portability I have 4 gig of storage on my mobile phone!
Twice as much as on my first PC!!
And that 4 gig cost £6.30!!
Also I have tonnes of data, video etc that I have saved but I never look at it!! You think it is worth saving at the time but you never look at it again.
Stuff becomes dated so fast and there is so much new media coming out you don't have the time, it's all on youtube for you anyway, and so easy to find.
Certainly my days of burning discs are pretty much over.
Easiest way is to use a usb stick, very portable, cheap holds loads of data.
That would be freakin sweet.