I only use hard drives as well.
I suggest external enclosures with internal drives. You only need one or two enclosures and you can then buy as many drives as you will ever need and just swap them out. SATA drives are now cheaper than IDE/PATA drives so I would buy a SATA enclosure. I also suggest you buy enclosures with a fan. I tried a few external drives that didn't have fans and they eventually crashed from the heat.
I generally use Seagate drives but also have some Western Digital. Both brands have been very good. The Seagates come with a 5 year warranty but of course there is no warranty for the lost data.
I have used the AMS Venus series external enclosures and recently purchased two Veris enclosures but I haven't put them online yet.
It works much better for me than CDs do and I can keep all the shows in their original filesets.
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