To quote Trudy, a business associate of mine who's a former mainframer, "I hate tape. There's just nothing worse than tape - except not having tape".

Removable hard disks have a number of problems, the greatest of which are bulk, fragility, cost and connector wear and contamination.

Looking at the system I was dealing with here, it's a complex, heavily used, 16-user Point of Sale / order tracking / production tracking system. It's prudent to rotate media daily on a 7 day cycle (plus a monthly cycle of Fridays if possible, and annual archives). and carry the most recent backup off-site.

Removable hard drives are too big to fit in purse or pocket and would be quickly destroyed by dropping and other accidents.

Yes, you can't trust a tape system. You have to auto-verify your backups daily and test restore every few weeks, but it's still the most practical, because it's fast, and the media is durable, portable, and cheap.

The death of tape has been predicted for every year in the past 15 years, but it's still with us, and will be for awhile.