I have been checking the HP and Seagate line of Travan products. They sell a 330000 hours lifetime... (37 years?)

It seems to be the only line of tape storage reasonably priced for home users...

Any comments on this? I would like some comments before I start shelling out euros for the unit and the 10GB cartridges...

Tapes die too... I have only experiences with antiquited Colorado700/1400 and DDS tapes (Data DAT). Colorado tapes are often unreadable... sometimes a DDS recorded the day before on a unit won't play into another unit...

I suggest you use several tapes and altern them. Say that you make one backup per month on three tapes.

Month 1 Tape 1
Month 2 tape 2, test one file on tape 1
Month 3 tape 3, test one file on tape 1 and 2
Month 4 overwrite tape 1, test 2 and 3
Month 5 overwrite tape 2, test 3 and 1
Month 6 overwrite tape 3, test 1 and 2
etc...

This way, you can react as soon as your tape recorder gets dirty or when your tapes become weared. Very easy if your backups are programmed.

Edit : it will also force you to replace your old tapes with new ones the very month they turn bad. Better than waiting ten years for one tape to die IMHO.