Thanks for the answer. Let me explain why I’m using DVD-Rs instead of backing it up to to hard drives. Firstly, I have a big collection of about 400 DVDs, so for continuity’s sake I want DVDs. Secondly, DVDs are cheaper. On http://amazon.com a 500GB hard drive costs 72 dollars which comes to 14.4 cents a gig, whereas 100 DVD-Rs costs 35 dollars coming to 8.6 cents a gig (assuming conservatively that I only use 4 gigs on a disc, though the capacity is 4.4). Finally, and most importantly, I feel that DVDs are more reliable and longer lasting, especially through moves and potentially rough handling. Hard drives are notorious for being very sensitive to shock and being not 100% reliable.
As far as the effort involved in burning 100 discs, I agree its a really big job and I have already been thinking about switching to hard drives as backup, despite my concerns as mentioned. However, if I can find software that would let me burn in batch mode, it would make the job much easier; not much harder than using hard drives. Even with hard drives I need to organize the data, etc. so simply organizing them into discs and setting it in batch mode should not add much to the task.
I found software called disc juggler that has this feature. Thanks for the help!