What if it that 32 gig is split up between various departments in small chunks? Do you want to give that flash drive or portable drive to a department that wants only its archived data and take the risk they'll overwrite it or the data of other departments? What if some of that data is confidential? Would you want personnel data on the same storage as last year's approve purchase orders?

Incidentally, it takes only seven or eight DVDs for that 32 gig. Burning DVDs may not fit the way you use a computer; that doesn't mean there isn't still a place for them or articles about them.