My camcorder uses mini-DVD's, and I have storage options there where I can copy the files over to regular-size DVD+R disks as save space on my hard drive.

I have friends who have DV tape camcorders and I have borrowed their camcorders and tapes and pulled video off to use for later editing. These 60 minute tapes produce AVI files that are around 12GB each. So far I have saved 6 nearly full tapes to my hard drive . . . that is about 72GB and is quickly filling up my 200GB HDD.

Since these are not my tapes and camcorders, using the original tape as my main copy and bringing it over to the computer as-needed is not really a practical option. As I understand it, converting to another format will reduce quality. I have contemplated chopping the AVI files into several files <4.7GB. I am not sure what software I would use but I assume this is do-able, or trying to backup the files across multiple DVD's. Another idea is an external hard drive, but even another 200GB HDD will only hold about 16 hours of video, and that is pretty expensive per hour.

Thoughts? Suggestions?