I still like LTO, but there could be a case made to just use cheap 8TB Archive HDDs, yea they will maybe not last as long, and will be more expensive in the long run (maybe)…
Cloud prices just dont make sense to me for archiving, I am not going to pay each month my terabytes of client data sits around on some cloud storage thing, 8TB Archives at wasabi would be 575$ a Year… lets say vs harddrives for a 3 year retention span, 3 years should be no problem for HDDs.
8TB Archive HDD = $200 you do want 2 separate copies in 2 different places though so $400.
8TB Wasabi = $575/Yea, at 3 years thats a cold hard $1725.
LTO is only worth it if you have way more Data …
Lets say you go with a dual Drive config from MLogic, LTO 8 mRack LTO-8 thats $5,699.00
1 Tape holds 12TB and costs like $70 , so lets say you need 2 again so $140.
So break even for LTO vs HDD is like 300TB of data… (150Tb if you do 2 copies each) considerably less if you only get one drive but having 2 is very convenient. Not considering the future price drops/increases just current pricing.
So if you write more than 300TB in 5 years I would call LTO a winner personally.
The thing with longevity of LTO tapes is kinda great but then how would you read a LTO 8 tape in 30 years? 