Pros and cons about Hard Disk Drives vs. DV tape?

Hi, I am also using the camcorder of Sony and I have used both the Hard disk drive and tapes but the only advantage I saw now a days that hard drive based camcorders takes a lot less time to transfer video to the computer from the camera for editing. In the DV tape world, transferring of standard definition video is real time - that is, 1 hour of recorded tape will take 1 hour to transfer and 1 hour of high definition video can take up to 2 hours to for transferring because of the decoding that goes on. Actually time will also depends on your computer's processor.

Rest of the things goes in favor of DV tapes.

1. DV tape records an hour, but DV tapes are affordable and generally there is a break in the video where a new tape can be inserted. The most important thing is what happens when the hard drive is filled and more video yet to capture. In such conditions I generally carry 5-10 tapes with me in addition to the planned number of hours of recording in the event.

2. In DV tapes once I lock the tape and after labeling it, when next time I do anything with is by rewinding and importing to my computer. Then put it back in its case and store it. I do my edits and output to DVD and sometimes I output back to the camera. Exporting back to camera allows me to use the camera as a playback machine connected with a HDTV. But a hard drive based camera would require me to archive the video on my computer basically to DVD - which is not as good of an archive method as digital tape.

3. And last best thing about DV tapes , once the tape is shot please do not re-use it. Take it out of the camera, mark its contents on the label and lock it. While it does take a gyration, it is possible to accidentally delete footage from a hard drive that you did not want to delete. Arguably, you could write over something on DV tape - but only if you use the rewind button during the capture process.

Hope you got my experience. So according to me you will have to go for DV tapes and not for Hard drives.