Tape drives remain the workhorse of long-term backup and archive: internal and external drives for the current tape generations, rack-mount units that pair with backup servers, and the drives that read the older cartridges an organization's retention policy still points at. For data that must exist offline, off-site, and for years, tape's economics remain hard to beat.
Generation compatibility is the core rule: tape technologies read and write a limited span of neighboring generations, so the drive must be chosen against both the new cartridges going in and the old cartridges that must stay readable. Match the drive's interface to the backup server, and confirm the backup software supports the drive - the software, drive, and cartridges succeed or fail as a set. When retiring an old drive, keep one working reader for every cartridge generation in the vault, or migrate the data while it can still be read. COLAMCO quotes tape drives and media for business, government, and education backup and archive programs.