Even then, you can get a used (still good, for a couple years at least) LTO-5 drive for around 200-250 EUR. The tapes cost about 20-25 EUR each and are good for

Even then, you can get a used (still good, for a couple years at least) LTO-5 drive for around 200-250 EUR. The tapes cost about 20-25 EUR each and are good for 1.5 TB -- with a small tape library you'd break even over hard drives beyond maybe ~20 TB. Remember, as disks get better, so will tape - the technology isn't the same, but similar enough that advances in one will certainly cause similar advances in the other.