Data archive is a common process among enterprises to retain the data that’s no longer relevant but can’t be gotten rid of yet.
A lot of times, data is not necessary at a particular moment or for a specific time period. In such cases, the data is archived so as to save time and storage space within enterprises.
The fundamental behind data archiving is that it protects all the older data that won’t further be needed for daily operations. This means that data that is irrelevant for the time being is archived. Such data can’t be deleted but is definitely stored in a different place.
Data archiving also reduces all the primary storage and provides an organization with the ability to maintain the data that might be required for regulatory purposes.
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Data archive basics
Here’s a small bookish definition for you. Archives are a copy of the data that has been created for reference purposes. Even though it might not exactly be required, the original data is usually deleted and an archive of the same is made rather.
Backups might sound an easy process, but know that archiving serves a variety of purposes over regular backups.
A common purpose of archiving is to help you find data that you had stored a long time ago and you actually don’t remember the exact location of where it is present.
Data archives could contain a single file or a bunch of them, or even gigabytes of storage that you just want to get rid of (for time being).
It might be any file that is important to an organization and suddenly has the need to be brought back!
Data archive: Is it necessary?
A lot of businesses store data on a large basis for the sake of providing personalized service and a great experience to their customer. And on the other hand, some businesses are just trying to figure out the right procedures for data management and how they need to adopt it.
As the businesses continue to grow, businesses start realizing what they exactly need to do with their data and if they should store it and create regular backups, archive it and save space on their systems, or just delete it and move on.
Some of this data is really essential depending on the industries it belongs to, while some of it is just storage consuming.
At such a time, the only best solution is to archive the data you have!
Let me tell you why!
The whole data archiving process strides at protecting the old information that might be irrelevant for time being and doesn’t serve any purpose. Data archive, as I mentioned, save the space and get rid of this data without actually deleting it.
Along with providing ‘storage solutions’, data archives also help in securing the data. Often, it creates read-only copies of the data where the archived copy of the data remains intact.
It saves businesses a great financial deal as it adds value to a business and ensures better data management.
Usually, enterprises don’t really rely on archiving as they are uncertain as to what kind of data should be archived and what should be left on the primary storage.
This helps in making the decision of what kind of data needs to be archived.
So, when should you Data archive?
As I mentioned, data every now and then is eligible to be deleted, but can’t be deleted because of the compliance reasons.
Depending on the time period of the data that it has to be retained for, or the need of the enterprises, data is usually preferred to be archived than to be actually deleted.
The archived data could be restored back in time, but deleted data can’t!
Information such as customer details, tax forms or legal documentation needs to be archived. Whenever it’s possible, the archival of information is always the best idea, since it reduces the risk of misplacing the records and other such important information.
It’s quite common for anything static or unused to still build up a relevance over time and in such scenarios, there is no better alternative than to archive this data.
The ultimate goal is to keep it out of the sight for as long as we want, but not delete it since it could be needed in due time.