Long-Term Records Management

As a gauge of storage demand, IDC says the total amount of disk storage shipped last year grew 40.5 percent from 2007. But with the storage requirements of average enterprises rapidly growing, keeping it all forever can create long-term management challenges and lead to headaches when something needs to be found. Analysts, attorneys, and vendors say enterprises are better off getting rid of some data -- but doing it judiciously. For IT departments, that means planning, carefully executing, and not going it alone. Companies that save everything are often those that aren't sure what needs to be saved or deleted. On top of the price of disks, tapes, networks and management, piling up too much data can come back to haunt a company in case of a lawsuit. It may cost $1 million to find and compile the data requested in "e-discovery," the process of collecting electronic data as evidence.

"Archiving should be used only to selectively retain information for specific periods of time. Separated from backup and done with specialized tools, the process runs more smoothly and prevents saving too much or too little information"...

"Although disks will get less expensive over time, in-house staff to manage them won't"...