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 rete...

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.

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(The following charts apply to respondents who answered "No" on question one.)
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6. Are you considering data archiving? [IMAGE][IMAGE]
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7. What kinds of data do you plan on archiving? [IMAGE][IMAGE]
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