Our experience has been the average backup tape lasts for no more than 50 uses (one use per week for 1 year). Compare that with hard drive backup. Hard drives last hundreds of thousands of uses (at least 3 years). High Rely media is actually cheaper than tape. When you factor in the 3 times longer life span (and that’s being conservative) the numbers change dramatically. At a snapshot towards the end of 2017 LTO 6TB tapes were $71 and a 6TB NAS HDD was $190. If you assume tapes last 1 year and drives last 3 years you get:

Consider the technology of a High Rely Hard Drive Backup: the electronics of the hard drive, the removable drive tray, the sata to USB3 conversion (if needed), the temperature sensor, the locking mechanism and the LCD display. You realize a High Rely hard drive backup system is a better financial investment.