Hard drives are like attics — they both collect a lot
of junk that someone thinks they need, but never uses once the item
is stored. Some users are worse than others when it comes to storing
old data. It’s not very hard to find files on someone’s system that
date from several years before. In fact, it’s possible to find files
that you can’t open because the user no longer owns the required application.
The “Cleaning Your Hard Drive” section of Chapter 1 describes other
related hard drive problems. The bottom line is that you can often
rid yourself of old files and clear up hard drive space as a result.
Sometimes people need to keep older files. A home user
won’t want to get rid of the pictures of mom and dad simply because
the files have become old. Imagine the chaos if your doctor or lawyer
purged old files that you really need for medical or legal reasons.
Corporations have certain legal requirements for data storage. When
a file isn’t in use, but you do need to retain it, then it’s time
to archive the data. Archiving preserves the data, but still moves
it out of the way.
Don’t confuse archiving with the backup process described
in the “Performing Backups” section of Chapter 8. A backup is a medium-term
storage and recovery method for protecting your computing investment
— it doesn’t remove data from your system; backups create a copy of
that data. An archive, as described in Chapter 5, moves data from
your hard drive to a permanent storage media such as a Compact Disk
(CD) or Digital Video Disk (DVD). The idea behind an archive is to
preserve the data while making your system more efficient.