>>1000885
He is merely thinking about buying a tape drive. Depending on how much of his 30 TB he's planning to backup, how often he'll need to access it, how often he wants to back up and how long he plans to keep the backups, going the tape route might be shooting himself in the foot. Consider:
Tape
* Good data integrity for 3 to 8 years after write (depends on tape and writing apparatus and storage environment)
* Data can be rewritten, typical total tape life 15 to 20 years
* New tapes around 30 EUR / TB (rarely if ever on sale)
* Used recorder around 300 EUR, likely to last 10 to 20 years with maintenance
* Fast sequential, slow seeking R/W
HDD
* Good data integrity for 1 to 2 years after write
* Data can be rewritten, typical total HD life 10 years (assuming you don't overuse or underuse it)
* New NAS-grade HDDs are starting to dip to 20 TB / EUR during sales
* You probably already have 10 external USB enclosures
* Random R/W
* Failure rate marginally higher than the tape route, all things considered
Optical discs
* Early MDisc DVDs are still readable and often at full integrity a decade later
* Not sure about the Blu Ray ones
* Breddy expensive per GB
* Writers are 50~100 EUR, often last 5~10 years
* Slow write-once, fast seeking read
* Bretty resilient, tiny, easy to store
* Optical readers might still be around in 10~20 years (?)
They all have their uses. I've personally gone full HDD.