Fun Fact! LTO drives are significantly faster than hard disk drives (HDDs)
In fact LTO7, LTO8 & LTO9 drives are ~2x as fast as the average HDD!
LTO drives have a SUSTAINED data transfer rate of 300 MB/second.
This compares to around 150 MB/second on the outer diameter of an HDD. And as an HDD fills up, the data rate decreases as the data is stored on the inner diameters of the drive.
This is why multiple HDDs (read RAID) are needed as a source when archiving media. RAID has the data rate necessary to keep an LTO streaming at full performance and prevents the tape from "shoe-shining" (read start and stop).
Way to go LTO!
And don't forget that LTO is the safest place to archive your media and costs a lot less per TB!