ARCHIVING IS A well-established discipline among Storage readers, with more than two-thirds reporting that they archive some form of data independent of their backup process. And they aren't newcomers to the archiving game. Forty-eight percent began archiving data in the past four years, while 52% began archiving data five or more years ago--well before the fear of regulatory compliance came into vogue.

When it comes to archiving, e-mail gets most of the attention; however, Storage readers are more often than not archiving files (72%), database records (57%) and then e-mail (43%). The most popular target media for data archives is almost evenly split between disk and tape (54% vs. 56%), but optical media is used by a respectable 33% of data archivers.

Readers are also grappling with some pretty lengthy retention times. Seventy-seven percent of respondents have archived data with retention periods of at least five years. Of this figure, 28% report retention periods of 20 years or longer. One respondent in the military has a retention period of 67.5 years on all personnel data.

The 32% of readers who don't have a data archive in place tell us that won't be the case for much longer. Of these respondents, 61% report that data archiving will be in place in the next year, with file data (77%) and e-mail (74%) at the top of their lists. Only 11% of respondents have no data archiving plans whatsoever.