An IBM 3592 JD Advanced Data Tape Cartridge costs a bit over $200 and has a raw (uncompressed) storage capacity of 15TB. An LTO-8 cartridge is 12TB and under $200. Meanwhile the cheapest 10TB HDD Newegg sells is $304.27.
> In a cold and dry room you can have your tapes sit for 3 decades and they'll work.
If you can find a working drive, and drivers, for a 30 year old tape. Look at all the problems NASA has with their old tapes. The tapes actually are fine, it's just a major effort to custom build a machine to read them.
Oh don't worry, you'll get a drive and drivers, these things are build for it and as long as not all vendors for the standard are bankcrupt, you'll get something to read the drive.
You can still obtain LTO-1 compatible drives nearly 2 decades after the standard was released.
No idea. It seems to be sold under the "if you need to ask, you can't afford it" pricing model. These things are definitely not intended for home use; I don't think any tape drives being sold today are, really.
