That detail is abstracted away from the user though, tapes north of LTO 5 (which is pretty old) allow addressing tapes like a normal file system, and if you are

That detail is abstracted away from the user though, tapes north of LTO 5 (which is pretty old) allow addressing tapes like a normal file system, and if you are doing backup things, the contents of the tape are held separately from the data itself. As an off-line archival backup medium, access times really are not a concern in the real world.