Deleting Footage

For the record, I guess I do still have the tapes as hard copies, but especially with SD/P2 etc, you end up deleting those too huh...?

yup. shooting with p2 you end up deleting alot of stuff, for good.
still i have almost all the footage I have still floaating around on old harddrives and in random places

I never delete my footage, i just move it to externals. Now that you can get 1.5 tb of space for around $100 there's no real point in deleting footage. I have stuff from like 4 years ago that I know I'll never ever use but i still on principle can't seem to part with it. It also comes in handy not to delete stuff because its a whole lot easier and cheaper to dig into your archives of stuff if you need some random shot than to have to go out and shoot it again. For instance, I just wrapped up some awful safety video piece and i ended up having to dig into last year's footage for some shots to round it off.

I convert all my footage, and discard all the og clips and keep the converted videos. I need a new external hard drive soon though

yup.

Spend a few on some fat hard drives, and find a safe dry space to store them for the REST OF YOUR LIFE.