That's fair. The LTO capacity was already still significantly larger than archive disc at any stage in archive disc's life cycle.

Both Sony and Panasonic completely failed to demonstrate actual value from the format. Smaller capacity, for the same kinds of environmental constraints, similar size drives etc. There was just no reason to actually use it.

Yeah, it's really too bad someone hasn't made a reasonably-priced archival format that consumers and small businesses can use, because LTO isn't it. The closest they have is MDISC, but the storage capacity is small, and from what I'm reading, discs advertised with this aren't necessarily all that long-lived anyway (if they're using dye).

What we need is a cheap, write-once format that can hold at least 1TB, similar to how we used to use CD-Rs 20-25 years ago, but without organic dye like those discs and with a far longer shelf life.

I wonder if someone could mass-produce a BD-R type media, but the size of a laser-disc, and resistant to almost all scratching. Maybe put it in a case like the old 3.5" floppy disks had?

It's called the cloud or Backblaze. Encrypt with your own keys and let them worry about moving the data to new drives every so often.

It's also quite expensive, at $6/TB/month. If you have a lot of data, that adds up quickly. Just for my 4TB backup drive, it's much cheaper to just use HDDs and rotate them myself.