Cons of Hard Drive Camcorders
A hard drive camcorder can be a great way to record your families' memories while you're on vacation or just when you're attending a special event such as a child's band performance or soccer game. While there are quite a few advantages to owning a hard drive camcorder, there are also a few disadvantages to the format as well.
Limited Size
With a hard drive camcorder you are limited to recording video that fits on the hard drive. With traditional tape camcorders you could switch out a nearly endless supply of tapes. With a hard drive camcorder once you fill the hard drive you have to stop recording until you can download the video to your computer.
Difficult Sharing
Hard drive camcorders can make recording a video for someone else more of a pain than it might be worth. With a hard drive camcorder you can't pass a tape off to a friend, instead you have to either pass off the entire camcorder for them to download the video themselves or download the video you record to your own computer and transfer it to an external hard drive or disc for them.
Camcorder Reliant Video
Hard drive camcorders make it so you have to have your camcorder present in order to download video to your computer. If you were to lose or damage your camcorder while on a trip, then you would also lose all the video you have recorded with it. With traditional tape camcorders you might lose your camcorder, but still have all your memories on tape.
Hard Drive Damage
The hard drive on your hard drive camcorder can be easily damaged if it is dropped. While most hard drive camcorders have some sort of shock protection, a drop could cause some of your data to be deleted or the entire hard drive to no longer be readable.
Expensive
Hard drive camcorders are typically much more expensive than their tape counterparts by several hundred dollars. You can often save some money by choosing a comparable camcorder that uses a tape rather than a hard drive.
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