Comment by dabiged

As someone who does tape recovery on very very old tape I largely concur with this with a couple of caveats.

1. Do not encrypt your tapes if you want the data back in 30/50 years. We have had so many companies lose encryption keys and turn their tapes into paperweights because the company they bought out 17 years ago had poor key management.

2. The typical failure case on tape is physical damage not bit errors. This can be via blunt force trauma (i.e. dropping, or sometimes crushing) or via poor storage (i.e. mould/mildew).

3. Not all tape formats are created equal. I have seen far higher failure rates on tape formats that are repeatedly accessed, updated, ejected, than your old style write once, read none pattern.