Quick question.

I have a Canon HF200 and I don't do very much recording (a couple of holidays per year). Can I use the memory cards as permanent storage instead of transferring to other mediums and just buy new cards when I need more recording space?

Thanks.

Yes, you can if money is not a problem for you. Flash media is the most expensive option for storage.

All SD/SDHC cards also have a write protect switch to prevent accidental erase of the content. Its life span is determined by number of erase-write cycles only. So it can last longer than hard disk drive. But it is way too expensive per gigabyte.