The only real issue I see is that strapping down external drives defeats the purpose of the external drive (portability).
Somehting I did once was buy a nice little PC case. Then put drives inside it instead of individual USb cases and powered them from its power supply. Then I put some IDE to USB adapters on the back of them and stuck a USB hub inside the case. That way I had only one power cord and one USB cable.
But I've since moved away from that, now I stick my drives in USB enclosures and stick them either in a drawer or the larger stuff like CD/DVD burners I store in cheap smaller laptop sleeves on a shelf in the closet with all the blank media behind it. So when I want to burn some data I just pull out the drive and use it then put it away.