Tape media remains the working answer for backup at scale and archives that must outlive hardware generations: data cartridges across the major tape formats, cleaning cartridges on their scheduled rotation, and the barcode labels that keep libraries automated. Offline, offsite, and cheap per terabyte is a combination nothing else quite matches.
Match cartridges to the drive generation exactly - tape formats read back a limited number of generations and write fewer, so the drive's documentation is the shopping list. Buy cleaning cartridges with the data cartridges and rotate them on the drive's schedule, because a dirty drive fails quietly and blames the media. For rotation schemes, count cartridges against the retention policy honestly; a scheme short of tapes overwrites the history it was built to keep. Labeled, catalogued cartridges are what makes a restore a procedure rather than an archaeology project. COLAMCO supplies tape media at volume for business, government, and education backup operations.