People who need to archive a shitload of data without reading often, or ever.

Tapes are a great archival medium, they have a very low cost per gb, and are able to be stored for decades. The only comparable medium is CD and other optical media like Blu-ray.

Hard drives have an expected life span of only around 5 years due to the moving parts, and while flash storage lasts about 10 years.

Normal people don’t, but when you get into absolutely massive enterprise archiving there’s no rival for the density and cost effectiveness. It sucks for general purpose storage, but for write once, hopefully never read use, they’re ideal.

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway

Removed by mod

I know it’s been said already, but actually a ton of off-site backup services operate exclusively on tape. It’s significantly cheaper and more reliable for cold storage solutions.