EMZETT.Archiving
Image: Photographische Werkstatt der Preußischen Staatsbibliothek, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
In short: The systematic, long-term keeping of data no longer actively needed in day-to-day business, but which has to be retained for legal or organisational reasons.
In more detail: Differs from a normal backup: a backup protects against data loss, while archiving ensures that old data stays findable and (often legally required, e.g. for invoices) verifiably unchanged over years.
In Depth
Legal retention requirements
In Germany, for example, the Fiscal Code (AO) and the Commercial Code (HGB) require business-relevant documents such as invoices, accounting vouchers and business letters to be kept for six to ten years — and in such a way that they remain in their original form (unalterable), complete, and machine-readable (keyword: GoBD — “principles for proper bookkeeping and retention of records”). This distinguishes archiving from a mere copy: a good archiving solution logs, without gaps, who accessed what and when, and technically prevents later changes (audit-proof integrity) — simply “copying a file into a folder” doesn’t meet these requirements, since nothing prevents, or even logs, later manipulation.
Audit-proof integrity and WORM storage
Technically, archiving often runs via specialised storage systems (WORM — “Write Once, Read Many”), which protect data physically or logically against overwriting/deletion — once written, a document can no longer be altered, only read, not even easily with administrator rights. This is combined with a searchable metadata layer (document type, date, involved people/companies, case number), so a single document among thousands or millions can still be reliably found even years later — during a tax audit, for example, a specific invoice often has to be producible within a short time.
Distinction from backup
A backup, by contrast, is typically overwritten regularly (older versions drop off after a certain time, e.g. “only the last 30 days are kept”) and primarily serves fast recovery after a technical failure (data loss from hardware failure, accidental deletion, ransomware), not long-term legal proof. A backup answers the question “how do I get yesterday’s data back if something goes wrong today”, archiving answers “can I still prove in eight years that this invoice was issued exactly like this and not otherwise”.
Email and communication archiving
An often-overlooked area is the retention requirement for business emails and other digital communication — these too count as retention-obligated business records in many jurisdictions, as soon as they concern content relevant for tax or commercial law (e.g. an invoice sent by email), not just classic paper documents.
Cloud archiving services
Cloud providers offer special, particularly cheap storage classes for archive data (e.g. AWS Glacier), where access to individual files can deliberately take several hours — in exchange for considerably lower storage costs than “hot”, immediately available storage. This fits well with the nature of archive data: it’s needed rarely, but not never, so a trade-off between cost and access speed makes economic sense.