It already is, by spinning disks. Cheaper at the low end, faster the whole way through, random access beats linear access for end user expectations.
Weren't they even originally marketed as such? At least the external enclosures that people like to shuck are usually called something like "my backup".
If their local snapshots are dead too, or they look for it and realize they can’t find a copy of something they thought they had, it’s often because they needed that data right away and it wasn’t there when they went to get it. Hence ‘user expectations’.
That’s not in a catastrophic case (which rarely happens) that’s the ‘bob just realized he deleted the folder containing the key customer presentation last Friday’ or ‘mary just tried to open the contract copy she needed and it’s corrupted’.
If it’s a once in 10 or 100 year or whatever event, a 1-2 day turnaround is not unexpected and everything else is probably broken too. The file deleted or something got screwed up happens more often and slow response there grinds things to a halt - and causes a lot of stress knowing it’s not ‘solved’.
A lot of companies are pretty terrible at figuring out catastrophic tail risks like this too.
Tape has it’s niche, this is one of them for sure.
Whats grand about tape is that its still faster to dump to your library, eject the magazines and store off site.
Whilst you can do that with HDDs (think snowballs but bigger) its a lot more expensive and error prone.
Tape serves a purpose, but thats pretty niche by todays standards.