back up data to Mini DV "its possible"
 

i have found a program that lets you back up data to a mini dv.

the software treats your camcorder as a tape backup device.

you can store 8 gig uncompressed on a 60 min tape. or 12 gig in long play

the only thig is that it would prb wear out your cam pretty fast. not sure tho.


here is an artice on it

http://www.jakeludington.com/project...dv_camera.html

I'm not sure why 1 miniDV tape at $5 - $10 per tape plus an hour of your time to record would be better than 2 or 3 standard data DVDs at $0.35 each and a few minutes of recording time, not even counting wear and tear on the camera. I'd sure rather wear out a $60 DVD burner than even the cheapest camcorder.

DVDs can get damaged easily and may degrade significantly faster than tape. The really bad ones will degrade in two years.

DV tape is about $4 each.

Having to do one tape and forget about it means you save a little time.

Get an LTO Ultrium 1 drive, you can usually get about 125GB on a tape and they have a shelf life of 30 years if you take care of them

You can find LTO 1 drives for under $1,000 and they normally last many, many hours of use (many more hours than video heads). Tapes are about $30, but that's a lot of data for 1 tape. They make LTO 3 which is 800GB compressed, but the drives and tape get significantly more expensive

I considered this option at one point, but the time it would take changed my mind quickly. You can burn several DVDs in half the time it would take to archive to a DV tape, and then you'd have redundant copies.

More importantly, you'd be relying on software to restore your data -- software which may not run on whatever OS you're running years from now when you go to restore the data. At least data DVDs are standardized, so they will remain readable for much longer.