https://www.amazon.com/HP-LTO-5-Ultrium-External-EH958B/dp/B...
The tapes are $31 and only store 1.5 T.
https://www.amazon.com/LTO5-Ultrium-1-5TB-3TB-Case/dp/B003KR...
I can buy a 1.5T hard drive for $47.
https://www.amazon.com/Generic-1-5TB-Internal-Desktop-Drive/...
I'm not seeing the cost-effectiveness of tape.
The latest version of the LTO standard is LTO8 and drives are around $2700 http://www.backupworks.com/Quantum-LTO-8-SAS-tape-drive-TC-L...
Raw capacity of LTO-8 is 12TB at $160, which is a much better value than LTO5
Factor in that these tapes are designed to be written to and then sit on a shelf for years and that such devices are more frequently purchased by enterprises expecting a long service life out of them (say 10+ years) the prices for the complete system do tend reflect this with a higher cost to entry.
This is important. Your $47 consumer hard drive will likely not have that longevity, nor will your home computer 10 years hence likely have the correct interface and drivers to access it.
Ditto for my 5.25" floppy drives.
I finally threw away my old magtapes because there is no way to read them.
I threw away my zip disks for the same reason. And my MD disks. And my old tape cartridges from the 90s - no way to read them.
My old computers I retired in perfect working order will no longer boot (probably bad capacitors, who knows).
VHS and LaserDisc players are no longer made.
The only long term solution I've found is to buy new hard disks every year and copy the data forward.
Harddrives usually last about 10 years without power at best before you loose significant amounts of data (you loose bits beforehand, don't worry).
If you can find a working drive, and drivers, for a 30 year old tape. Look at all the problems NASA has with their old tapes. The tapes actually are fine, it's just a major effort to custom build a machine to read them.
You can still obtain LTO-1 compatible drives nearly 2 decades after the standard was released.