I wonder if this was a typo. Did they mean that LTO-8 tapes are out of stock? Otherwise, the sentence structure "even if ... are now in stock, you can buy ..." is kind of weird.
> reformat them to M8 and get 9TB of native storage (22.5TB compressed).
What does this mean? Doesn't how much it compresses depend on the data not the storage device?
LTO-8 drives can also use blank LTO-7 media to get density halfway between LTO-7 and LTO-8; this is referred to as LTO-7 Type M, or Type M-8. This applies to the raw storage capacity, not just the compressed capacity (which is conventionally referred to with the assumption of a 2.5x compression ratio, even though not all real-world data is compressible).
https://www.google.com/shopping/product/10502190238469223139
Google says
"HP LTO-8 Ultrium, 30 TB, RW Data Cartridge Tape. Exhaustively tested, HPE LTO Ultrium cartridges meet all your demands for maximum reliability when restoring data, offering high storage density, ease of management and scalable storage and backup performance."
TapeandMedia.com says
"1 - HPE LTO Ultrium 8 Tape with a capacity of 12 TB and up to 30 TB compressed capacity."
Here's a 15TB compressed for $63:
https://www.amazon.com/HP-C7977A-Cartridge-Compressed-Capaci...