So, first I would quibble a bit with the time scales you're talking about, as tape access could easily be more than tens of seconds, depending on status: Even a

So, first I would quibble a bit with the time scales you're talking about, as tape access could easily be more than tens of seconds, depending on status: Even a loaded tape might take a minute to reposition, if the data you want is at the opposite end. In the world I support, everything has to be funded by something. We have our "cheap and deep" storage, for example (http://oak-storage.stanford.edu http://oak-storage.stanford.edu), but labs who use it have to pay for it. Unchecked growth is highly unlikely, as grants run out eventually, and then the data will have to go somewhere else. Often these days, that ends up being Google Drive, but there is demand for tape archival storage. Even the Stanford Digital Repository (https://library.stanford.edu/research/stanford-digital-repository https://library.stanford.edu/research/stanford-digital-repos...), who are extremely serious when they talk about "long-term", say they're developing pricing models.