I'm watching my pile of old hard drives with centuries worth of books, comics, music and movies, which are all gathering dust. And now the intrusive thoughts of replacing them with a somewhat modern solution are starting to appear.
Just started researching about tape drives, and the first quarter of rabbit's hole is promising.
They do seem like the best backup solution ever. I can find brand new LTO-4 1.6TB tapes for like $12. Drive goes for about $200. There are better tapes which go from 5 to 10TB, but their drives are also more expensive.
I love the concept, though. Tapes are pure media, like DVD-RW drives. No electronics on them. They won't die because a spindle motor or a controller chip failed, or a bit flipped in the flash chip holding the firmware. Tapes are ancient retro tech thriving in the solid state age.
What do you think? Am I deluding myself?