if you think that rewritable optical media is gonna outlast flash drives I would do some research on that subject, theoretically cdrw's can be rewriten 1,000s of times, and I've already worn out about a dozen maxell cdrs. Theres no obvious scratches on them but they fail data verification by 30% their capacity, good thing their cheep, toss it out and grab a new one. However, flash drives haven't quite been around long enough to truly test their durability, but so far have shown a far superiority to optical media in the fact that they are much more stable at higher temerature levels than the organic dyes used in rw discs. Sorry, don't have a lot of experience with the dvd rw media, but it does use the same organic based dyes as the cd counterparts, and with narrower bit spacing are likely to be more succectable failed dye layers.