Stilton: Sounds like a good system. There was something sound about hard copy to preserve files for a long time. HDs are much more convenient because of how much space they condense, but there's always that risk of corruption or something disappearing due to unexpected errors. Discs for storage are even worse. In terms of nostalgia I like hanging on to some of my more cherished CDs, and they make good back up, too.
It works for one person who likes audiobooks a lot. (Them paying for the base materials doesn't hurt, either.)
As much as a risk is involved in banking on external drives all the time, they're the only feasible choice for game collection archiving. Otherwise, it's spending a ton of time and money, only to end up with a system that's a total mess once you've got games separated from patches and DLC. (Almost forgot about the DLC part, but that would get scattered too.)