Mistake to buy a hard drive camcorder?

[CJsMom]

I just bought a Panasonic hard drive camcorder, planning to use it on our upcoming trip in December. I did research on Consumer Reports, Cnet, etc., and all reviews were good, so I went ahead and bought it. Now I'm reading posts about the hard drive going bad and losing all the video! Did I make a mistake? Do hard drives really go bad that often? How come none of the reviewers mentioned that point?

I know there are places in DW that you can bring your camera memory card to and they will put the pictures on DVD for you. I wonder if they would burn video from a camcorder onto DVD? If so I could do that mid-week, and then if the hard drive went bad I'd only lose half of the week.

It is a hybrid, so at least I could do some recording onto SD cards.

It's not even out of the box yet. Should I return it?

 

[NostalgicDad]

We've had a JVC 30gb HDD camcorder for over a year now. To this point we have not had any problems with it. In fact, it's been really convenient not having to worry about grabbing tapes, cards, etc. Just grab the camcorder (and batteries) and go. I like the fact that we can dump the contents onto the computer and start with a fresh hard drive as well.

Like anything, hard drives can and will fail eventually. But, it shouldn't fail on something just purchased and shouldn't for quite some time. It's possible the posts you are reading could be isolated and are just easily blown out of proportion. Of all the technology products I purchase, there are always negative reviews to some degree. I'd really consider the source of complaints before returning but definitely return it if you are not happy or are uncomfortable with it.

 

[manning]

Like anything, hard drives can and will fail eventually. But, it shouldn't fail on something just purchased and shouldn't for quite some time. .

Don't say that twice. I had a hard drive on a brand new computer fail a month after I got it and it wasn't being used to extreme.

The fact is you don't know when they will fail. That's why I back up pronto.

 

[DizneyNutz]

Don't say that twice. I had a hard drive on a brand new computer fail a month after I got it and it wasn't being used to extreme.

The fact is you don't know when they will fail. That's why I back up pronto.

In everything you buy ie: car, camera camcorder, etc. I know someone that has built several computers and has had hard drives fresh out of the box that turned out to be defective (but where replaced without question), but is it common, I wouldn't say so. Probably slightly more common in the electronics world, but the odds of you getting a bad one is probably pretty slim as long as it had good reviews to begin with. Also if you did end up with a BAD one, the company should stand behind the product as long as you purchased from a reputable company. So I would not be too concerned, unless you totally do not feel comfortable with your product.

 

[CJsMom]

Well, I have a couple of weeks to test it out before we leave, so I will know if it will fail "out of the box". I guess even with digital tape or DVD there's always a possibility of something going bad. In most cases when I use this camera I will download to my computer/dvd right away. But on vacation I have no way to do it. Maybe it's a good excuse to buy a laptop?

 

[DizneyNutz]

Maybe it's a good excuse to buy a laptop?

Have a great trip.

 

[Groucho]

I've been doing PC support work for over a decade now, and hard drives definitely can and do fail, often with no warning and it can happen when they're one week old or six years old. There's a reason why a few years ago, nearly all the manufacturers moved from the previous industry-standard 3-year warranties to one-year warranties. (Currently you can find 3-year warranties on a minority of drives and Seagate has 5-year warranties across the board.)

The problem with a failure of a hard drive vs a miniDV tape or miniDVD as used in other camcorders is that you have a decent chance of losing all your data all at once (if you're lucky, you might just get some corruption ahead of time and you can still recover most of your stuff), and the whole camcorder is down while you determine what's involved in having the hard drive replaced, or doing it yourself.

Whereas, of course, with a tape or DVD system, one bad tape or DVD will not affect the camcorder itself and has a good chance of most of it being recovered. The tape system will also have better image quality than the hard drive or DVD-based camcorders.

On the other hand, the hard drive camcorder will have more convenience than the others. (Except when the drive is full and you're stuck!) I would definitely recommend regularly pulling your video off it, don't just leave it there to fill up with no backup.

 

[CJsMom]

I've been playing around with it and I really like it - so we're going to keep it. I think I will invest in a couple of 4G cards to take with us (or 8G if I can find them). Maybe we'll alternate - couple of days record to the HD, next day record to a card. According to the research I did it's a reputable model so most likely we'll be fine. And we'll keep our old analog camcorder as a backup (not bring it on vacation with us - but keep it at home as an extra). Thanks for all the input!

 

[Anewman]

I've been playing around with it and I really like it - so we're going to keep it. I think I will invest in a couple of 4G cards to take with us (or 8G if I can find them). Maybe we'll alternate - couple of days record to the HD, next day record to a card. According to the research I did it's a reputable model so most likely we'll be fine. And we'll keep our old analog camcorder as a backup (not bring it on vacation with us - but keep it at home as an extra). Thanks for all the input!

Are you sure you can put full resolution video on the memory card?

My two camcorders the memory card is used only for stills and low res video.

 

[CJsMom]

Are you sure you can put full resolution video on the memory card?

My two camcorders the memory card is used only for stills and low res video.

According to the manual I can put full-res on the SD card. Looks like I get 50minutes on a 4 GB card at the highest quality setting. Thanks for asking that question - I had not thought of it!