Tape is the only sensible storage format for raw footage in my opinion. It's the acquisition format anyway and the best archiving format for DV and for HDV. If you ever need to re-edit your project after you deleted it off your hard drive, all you need are the tiny project files and other assets to recompose your movie again. Works for me with Premiere Pro all the time.

Hard disks are temporary storage, just for the editing jobs. Especially if you film a lot, hours of footage from different projects every week, how can you keep storing all of those Gbs of data on hdd's that are prone to fail!

I've archived to DVD-R for years. Never lost a file. Projects are recreated with ease. Minimal storage hassles, easily stored and accessed.

The only tedious part, once archived, is the copying process from disc to drive... but that is more than offset by the time it takes to capture PLUS have Cineform reconvert the raw footage.

Random access is much simpler with disc as well. I can quickly preview clips to search for a specific shot... find it, copy it.. done.

I agree that hard drives are not flawless, and many will find fault with using discs because of their particular workflow.... but for me, it's a breeze and an easily managable solution.

Let's separate out the use of tape for acquisition and initial storage, vs storing the final output.

I never reuse tapes and therefore, I always have the original material. I use HDLink to capture using scene detect, and I keep the M2T files, so I always have the M2T files for backup. I store those on an external hard drive shortly after I sort out the good ones from the bad ones. (I shoot a lot of bad ones.)

I never backup or store the Cineform files, only the M2T which saves tons of drive space.

I back up my Premiere Pro project files on to DVD-ROM, and I back up my final Cineform AVI to a hard drive. I just don't see the need to back up anything to tape since I can always recapture and recreate from the project files if I lose a backup hard drive. Which has yet to happen (knock on wood).