Editing Linear Tape-Open (section)

=== Comparison to Disk Storage ===

For decades, tape storage has primarily been used only in a few special situations, such as with mainframes or for backup and archiving, so the declining cost of disk made it seem possible that disk would completely take over the remaining uses of tape. In spite of this, the continuing evolution of tape technology, and particularly LTO, has kept tape storage relevant.

Tape and disk storage have some important fundamental differences. Tape generally has lower marginal costs, is more portable, and has better long term stability. These attributes make tape very appealing for large primarily offline data sets.   Disk generally has much lower initial costs, much better access times, and is better suited to normal everyday usage.

Costs get complicated when considering large storage systems. Besides the simple unit cost of the data storage media, there are costs related to the hardware that makes use of and manages the media. Large robotic tape libraries are capable of managing hundreds of petabytes of data. Since most tapes in a library sit passively in their storage slot, the system uses relatively little power per TB stored.   By contrast, disks must be kept powered on, spinning, and attached to some sort of computer system. The cost and capacity of storage arrays and tape libraries varies widely.

As HDD prices have dropped, disk has become cheaper relative to tape drives and cartridges. For decades, the cost of a new LTO tape cartridge plus the tape drive required to make use of it, has been much greater than that of an equivalently sized HDD. However, tape cartridges typically have a substantially 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.<ref name="ProStorage"/>

Tape is also used as ''offline'' copy, which can be protection against ransomware that cipher or delete data (e.g. tape is pulled out of the tape library, blocked from writing after making copy or using WORM technology). In 2019, many businesses used tape for backup and archiving.<ref name="Schwartz"/>

Larger server disks have flooded the market as capacity increments are rolled out. USB boxes with giant second hand server disks make a very cheap backup solution. Tape has faded face of low cost server class disks. The USB enclosure are so inexpensive ($25) they can be shelved directly and labels can be attached easily.