Tape is the most common media that is used for save and restore operations. It has been around for some time, so it has been widely adopted and continues to be popular. Tape provides several advantages over other storage methods, for the following reasons:
| Characteristic | Comparison |
|---|---|
| Capacity | As the amount of data you create grows, you can increase your capacity by simply adding additional tape volumes. |
| Security | It is easy to keep your data secure by securely storing backups or copies at an off-site location. This also guards against on-site data corruption from viruses, fire, natural disasters, accidental deletions, and other data-loss incidents. |
| Cost | Because you can store a larger amount of data on tape, it has a lower cost per gigabyte. |
| Reusability | You can rotate your tapes for backups, which means that you have more than one set of tapes. When one set expires, you can write over the data on it and use the media again. |