I have restored a few hundreds LTO-1 and 2 tapes using an LTO-3 drive a few years ago. If you keep the drives around and run Linux (which supports obsolete hard

I have restored a few hundreds LTO-1 and 2 tapes using an LTO-3 drive a few years ago. If you keep the drives around and run Linux (which supports obsolete hardware better), keeping LTO tapes 10, 15, 20 years is not a problem at all. A few weeks ago I wrote for a customer a restore utility for LTO-4/5/6 made with a now-deceased archival system from a deceased software company. Most of these tapes are up to 16 years old, have been kept in ordinary office cupboards, and work perfectly fine. But you're right that archival isn't much about the media, but is a process. "Archive and forget" isn't the way.