Data Archiving

Data archiving is the process of moving data that is no longer actively used to a separate storage system for long-term retention. It involves identifying, organizing, and storing data in a secure and accessible format to meet compliance, historical, or analytical needs. This practice helps manage storage costs, improve system performance, and ensure data preservation over time.

Also known as: Data Retention, Cold Storage, Long-term Data Storage, Data Preservation, Archive Management

Why learn Data Archiving?

Developers should learn data archiving to handle large datasets efficiently, comply with legal or regulatory requirements (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA), and optimize application performance by offloading inactive data. It is crucial in industries like finance, healthcare, and e-commerce where historical data must be retained for audits, analytics, or disaster recovery.

Learning Resources

• docs: AWS Data Archiving Best Practices
• course: Data Archiving Fundamentals on Coursera
• docs: Introduction to Data Archiving by IBM
• video: Data Archiving Strategies Tutorial on YouTube
• book: The Data Archiving Handbook