USAFRet :
Does anyone remember the concept of using your
VCR as a tape backup.
I never did it, but it was out there.
Not surprising, VCR tech (at least for TV companies) has been around for almost as long as cassette tapes. The technology is basically the same, & I would assume would actually have benefits, given the assumed higher bandwidth (wider tape in a VHS vs. in a cassette tape) & greater storage (VHS tapes could store anywhere from 120 to 360 minutes of video, depending on the quality setting, while cassette tapes were limited to 60, 90 or 120 minutes based on the length of tape inside them).
And I don't know how realistic it was, but I seem to remember Tom Clancy's
Red Storm Rising having a scene where the E-3 AWACS had stored the data feed from their radar systems onto VHS tapes; after the live feeds were used to identify fuel truck convoys for air strikes, they "rewound" the data to locate the hidden fuel depots where the trucks had come from. Don't know if they were implying that the data itself was being stored on the tapes, or if they were just recording the visual displays from the radar screens, but I don't see why (with the proper hardware & connectors) you couldn't use a VHS to back up your hard drive. Which is only crazy given that the trend nowadays is to convert those old VHS "home" videos to DVD format (kind of like how people first converted their old 8mm & 16mm home movies onto VHS).