4. Data Archiving

Data archiving is the process of moving data that is no longer actively used to a separate storage device for long-term retention. Archive data consists of older data that remains important to the organization or must be retained for future reference or regulatory compliance reasons. Data archives are indexed and have search capabilities, so files can be located and retrieved.

Archived data is stored on a lower-cost tier of storage, serving as a way to reduce primary storage consumption and related costs. An important aspect of a business's data archiving strategy is to inventory its data and identify what data is a candidate for archiving.

Some archive systems treat archive data as read-only to protect it from modification, while other data archiving products enable writes, as well as reads. For example, WORM (write once, read many) technology uses media that is not rewritable.

Data archiving is most suitable for data that must be retained due to operational or regulatory requirements, such as document files, email messages and possibly old database records.