cd / dvd file indexes

im looking to write my own little program to help me archive my animu off my hard drive.
Ive got the archiving part down, but i need to output it somehow. The wo possible solutions are to burn it off straight away, or to output to a cd/dvd type file index (like Nero's .nri).

I'd prefer to store the information in something similar to the .nri , so i can burn it off anytime i want in the future.

Question is, how does one write a compatible .nri?

Do the people of 4chan know of any other formats which are viable?

Cuesheets are unusable, as they're made for music and i dont want to burn each file on a separate track.
Also, any iso image types are bad, obviously because im keeping a duplicate copy of the data.
What i mean by file index is a file that points to the various locations of the files i wish to burn, much like a .nri

Any help?

external hdd's dont have redundancy.

while one may argu that SMART *might* help, usually its either too late, or they die in accidents, especially the case with ext. hdd's.

E.g. i lent it to a friend, who was dickhead and dropped it.

SMART warnings are meant to warn when the drive is close to failure, but at this point, the drive may start to give read errors.

redundancy will solve all those problems.. (well unless you have a house fire)