When a HDDs dies, that is far worse than when a tape drive dies, because you not only lose some money, but you also lose data, which may be priceless, unless you have been careful to have backup copies.
While there are some companies that offer data recovery services from defective HDDs, for recent HDD models such services can be very expensive, comparable with the cost of a tape drive and much more expensive than the service of copying a good tape on a HDD, which can be done when it is not possible to buy a replacement drive immediately and the data is needed urgently.
It's same most of the time and LTO drive dies if you have at least any amount of dust while HDD doesn't give a fuck
> but you also lose data, which may be priceless
No difference if you sat on the tape with yours only one copy of your favourite porn.
And if you only have one copy of data then it doesn't really matter on which media it resides.
And oh, you CAN write the same data to two HDDs simultaneously with mirroring or just having a two copy jobs to a two separate hard drives, which would not only give you a physical separation but logical as well. For you to do the same with the tape - shell another $3000.
The real disadvantage of tapes is what the drive may die at any time and if you don't have another drive then you can't recover. And a replacement drive wouldn't be cheap (new) or reliable (used).