Harddrive-based camcorder as standalone security camera?

["Doug Way" <dew_dropper@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm looking for a simple, fairly portable standalone security camera
setup.  Something that could be loaned out on a temporary basis, is
located indoors, and records things outdoors (say, car break-ins)
through a window.  And not too expensive, hopefully less than $600 or
so.

Looking at these new harddrive-based camcorders that have come out this
year, I wonder if they might be a workable solution...

For example, the new Toshiba Gigashot 60GB camcorder ($450) can record
up to 55 hours on its lower-quality setting, not bad!  There's also the
Sony DCR 30/60GB Handycam models with the infrared nightvision setting,
which could be handy.  You could just let it run, and reset it every
day or two to make sure the hard drive didn't fill up.  It's obviously
a lot more workable than a MiniDV camcorder, where you'd have to swap
tapes every few hours.  If an incident occurred, then we'd download the
video file to a PC to view and edit as needed.

Has anyone tried using one of these camcorders this way?  I'm wondering
if the camcorders would run reliably nonstop for 24 or 48 hours without
a problem, recording to a single giant mpeg file.  Also, would they be
OK running 24/7 for a few weeks.  Ideally, there'd be some way to set
the camcorder to record nonstop indefinitely, such as recording to a
new file every 12 hours and deleting the oldest file on the hard
drive... but I'm guessing none of these camcorders have such a feature.

I know there are other setups I could go with, but I'd rather not lug a
monitor and PC (or DVR) around.  The nice thing about the above setup
is that you just use the camcorder viewfinder as your viewing screen.
And you get better video quality and zoom capability for the money with
camcorders than you do with dedicated security cameras.

I think these are my options:

1. Use a harddrive-based camcorder by itself, as described above.

2. In an ideal world, hardwarewise I'd be able use a cheaper MiniDV
camcorder such as the Canon ZR500 ($235), and buy my own external 200GB
hard drive for $150 or so and plug that into the camcorder via firewire
and just record video straight to the hard drive, with the camera
controlling the hard drive.  That would be awesome, and pretty cheap.
I assume there aren't any camcorders that can do this?

3. If none of the above setups are workable, I guess I could get a
cheaper MiniDV camcorder and then a used laptop for $400 or so with a
decent sized hard drive and firewire connection, with software to
record straight to the laptop?  With that setup I'd guess the camcorder
should be able to run indefinitely, and I could have motion detection
and some other nice features.  That's more of a hassle for someone to
borrow and figure out how to use, though.

Thanks for any input.

- Doug