[adrian_b]

Tape is slow only when you need frequently to read some random part of it, because you might need a couple of minutes to go till the other end of the tape.

The reading/writing speed of tapes is excellent, better than that of hard drives, so writing a backup takes less time.

For archives that are accessed only infrequently, tape is more reliable and also faster.

If you want to have access in less than a minute to any part of your backups, then yes, tape is inappropriate and you must use HDDs.