The moving part of a "tape library" is known as a "tape robot." For the past few decades there really have been physical robot arms retrieving data from long-te

The moving part of a "tape library" is known as a "tape robot." For the past few decades there really have been physical robot arms retrieving data from long-term storage. This is still an area of development today, because tapes are cheap but only if you don't need a drive for each one. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape_library https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape_library