“Public information on tape drive sales is not readily available. Unit shipment peaked at about 800,000 units in 2008, but have declined since then to about 400,000 units in 2010,[98] and to less than 250,000 by the end of 2018[99]
As HDD prices have dropped, disk has become cheaper relative to tape drives and cartridges. As of 2019, at any capacity, the cost of a new LTO tape drive plus one cartridge is much greater than that of a new HDD of the same or greater storage capacity. However, most new tape cartridges still have a lower price per gigabyte than HDDs, so that at very large subsystem capacities, the total price of tape-based subsystems can be lower than HDD based subsystems, particularly when the higher operating costs of HDDs are included in any calculation.[100]”
Oh yeah, tape drives are still used for long term storage because tape tends to be a lot more durable and cheaper. You can safely store info on tape for decades.
i had thought that tape was used by big enterprises
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open
“Public information on tape drive sales is not readily available. Unit shipment peaked at about 800,000 units in 2008, but have declined since then to about 400,000 units in 2010,[98] and to less than 250,000 by the end of 2018[99] As HDD prices have dropped, disk has become cheaper relative to tape drives and cartridges. As of 2019, at any capacity, the cost of a new LTO tape drive plus one cartridge is much greater than that of a new HDD of the same or greater storage capacity. However, most new tape cartridges still have a lower price per gigabyte than HDDs, so that at very large subsystem capacities, the total price of tape-based subsystems can be lower than HDD based subsystems, particularly when the higher operating costs of HDDs are included in any calculation.[100]”
Oh yeah, tape drives are still used for long term storage because tape tends to be a lot more durable and cheaper. You can safely store info on tape for decades.