Plus, I don't know how reliable these BD-R's are compared to a hard drive.

I use harddrives for archiving. I use mostly older 160 amd 250 GB discs, where I have upgraded to 1TB in my PC's.

I use them in a Dock like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153071&cm_re=docking_station_hard_drive-_-17-153-071-_-Product

It works great for me.

/Ulf

Regarding BD Discs;

They are about the same price as hard drives I guess. However, I use BD discs because of space considerations, ease of use, and cash flow outlay. In other words, it seems to hurt a lot less for me to lay out a few bucks every week, than to make a more major purchase every couple months, or however quick you would need to buy hard drives.

Also consider that the per disc price will come down drastically. I don't see hard drives getting much cheaper in the future, even the smaller ones only fall in price so much, and then kind of plateau in price.

BD discs last a long time, if you get good ones. I've seen 100 years claimed. Although that is kind of hard to believe, so say - 50 years.

I have the Pioneer 205 model. It is a very good drive. Very quiet, very solidly built, very fast. For data storage, if you have Win 7 you won't need any other software or drivers. Windows has the drivers on board and you can burn any kind of disc (BD, DVD, CD) right from any folder with just the OS. Very easy. Very Handy.

And, of course Vegas and DVD Architect have no problem with this drive either. They just work.

Will

BD discs last a long time, if you get good ones. I've seen 100 years claimed. Although that is kind of hard to believe, so say - 50 years.

I hope that's true.

I was pissed off to see the "infinite life span" of CD-R and DVD-R turn into 2 to 5 years, or even just 1 year in hot and humid Singapore.

Commercial BDs are replicated, that's a totally different process, so I expect those would last 50+ years.

The duplicated "burned" BD-RE disks though, that seems less likely, and I'm not sure anyone knows.

I archive entire projects to hard drive. If I need to repurpose them (as I sometimes do) then I just pop the drive in a dock and work on the project directly off the drive. Also, Blu-ray drives are much slower than a hard drive so it would take 15-20 minutes just to transfer that 25GB disc back to the hard drive. 1.5TB drives are only $100 which is about half the cost of Blu-ray storage.

RE: backup to Hard Drive

I don't have any personal experience, but I've heard that some folks have had problems with archived hard disks .. that sat, unused, on a shelf .. until the lubrication dried up and when they went to access the disk they couldn't.

So I guess, be sure to "excercise" the disks on a regular interval.

Add me to the hard disk camp. I treat every type of optical media that I burn as "consumable". I have a number of unreadable three-year old DVDs in a folder that reinforces my point of view. I work in a data center with more than 5,000 servers and have seen every form of optical media used for various purposes in this facility over the last eight years. We've had big CD and DVD libraries for various purposes, but today, there is not a single form of optical media library on the raised floor. Not one!
If you want to keep the data, save it to hard drive.
If you absolutely want to keep the data, save it to two hard drives and keep one somewhere else.
If you need to be green, research a concept called MAID, massive array of idle disks. Or, for your three to six drives, just let Windows spin them down or use eSATA or NAS.

"If you absolutely want to keep the data, save it to two hard drives and keep one somewhere else."

This is absolutely true. Digital data is not safe unless it exists in two physically separate places.

Ok, I’m convinced. I just went out and bought a 1TB drive to back up my MiniDVs. I have a need to sell my SD camera now, before I can’t get anything for it. It’s the only way I can afford a new HD camera and I want to get away from tape. I’d just like to ask one question. If I dump the tape to the timeline and edit out the bits I don’t want to save space then render to avi will I loose any quality in the resulting video?

Thanks
John