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What do to with old Data

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7 replies

by chicharelli

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So my Company has been around for about 20 years recently there was significant funds spent on the IT enviroment, one of the problems we face is what to do with old data especially in our finance department, old finacial year records etc, documents and files we dont use on a daily basis but cannot be deleted due to "we may need them one day" so what do i do? let it clog up my server? re-implement a recently retired server and move all the data there? SAN?

I dont want my nice new infrastructer full of old data but at the same time need it close by..

7 replies

by photek

How much data is it? In our company we back up old data to tape and then store the tapes in a safe location.

by chicharelli

yep we do this already but im looking for something with a quicker turn around time if we need the data then slamming in a backup tape and restoring..

i think a SAN or a recently retired server is the best bet..

by kmdennis

I say use one of those enterprise free solutions such as FreeNAS or install OpenSolaris and use that new file system on one of those retired servers. And keep it powered off to preserve the HD. If you don't need to access the material regularly, that would also save some power costs. Fire it up once a month, make sure it is scanned for virus, malware, spyware etc and keep it cool.

by oh smeg

But have you thought of Archiving it on something like a External HDD in an actively cooled enclosure?

Antec make a enclosure they call the MX1 which can carry a 1 TB Drive which is ultra reliable has both USB and ESATA Interfaces and treats the drive in it very nicely.

http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/product.php?id=NDc=

I'm sure that others make a similar enclosure but as I have only ever used the MX1's I have no direct experience with them. ;)

Only thing with Financial Records is you need to check that any new software that the company uses can read these files as some accounting packages do not read different makes very well. So you may need to also keep the Packages that these products where used in if your company changes it's Accounting Packages.

Though if you use something like this I would still retain the other backup's just so that there are no potential problems with Data Loss.

Col

by nexs

800GB backup tapes and a tape library?

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