What to do with my Home Movies?

I'll get away from my political and social postings... Here is something REALLY important.

What do you do with your home movies. In my case, the situation is even worse. I bought a digital camcorder right before I got married, but I went with the "Digital 8mm" tape format. This format will end much sooner than the MiniDV tape format and I'll soon be stuck with lots of unreadable tapes (once my 8 year old camcorder dies...)

So what should I do? I've thought of everything..
1 - I could copy everything to MiniDV tape.. A slow half realtime process that would require copying it to my PC and then to the new tape. Plus I would have to buy a miniDV camera.

2 - I could copy everything to a harddrive. It would take 13 gig per 1 hour tape, but that's doable. But is a harddrive safe enough? So I would have to have two drives just in case. Plus I don't know how long a harddive keeps its data when not used.

3 - I could copy to DVD but that would mean spillting the 13 gigs into 3 DVDs. Doable but time consuming.

4 - I have edited most of the best tapes and make good DVD's with menus and all and I've made several copies re-burn them when they start skipping in the DVD player. But DVD is lower quality than the original DV footage, but more accessible. So even this is a trade off.

My current solution has been to make DVD's of the most important videos. Burn several copies, keep them in different locations, and even keep an ISO or VOB files on my PC and an external harddrive (kept at work). The Digital8mm tape itself if a backup for a while longer. Even if my camera dies, I would probably buy a cheap playback only unit just in case.

Beware the tapeless camcorder | CNET News.com