I've been considering the options of the Firewire products and other methods of tapeless content storage while shooting.

I'm curious...do most of you still use tape as a backup or are most users going it without tape? Are the systems out there robust enough to work without tape?

Many thanks.

Although I haven't used such systems yet, I know that if I did I
would run tape along as well. Tape is cheap, why run the risk?

I readily agree that tape is relatively cheap. But the longer recording times of the tapeless systems lends itself to shooting in situatiions where the change of tape may be distracting and obtrusive. Think of a performance or a doc where a change of tape may occur at an unfortunate time or place.

I may be in such a situation on a film so was curious if people were satisfied with the available systems to the point where they don't use the tape as a backup.

Are these sytems reliable and robust enough to shoot without tape as a backup?