Archived

Archived is the past participle of archive and an adjective describing data, records, or materials that have been placed in an archive for long-term preservation or reference. In information management, archives are collections of records retained beyond their immediate operational use to meet legal, administrative, or historical purposes. Archived data is typically stored in a non-active state, often with reduced access permissions, and may be moved to low-cost or offline storage.

Archiving processes include selection and appraisal to determine what to keep, applying retention schedules, assigning descriptive metadata, and transferring data to archival formats or repositories. Archived materials may be stored as copies of files, database dumps, or disk images, often compressed and protected by checksums to ensure integrity. Access may be restricted and retrieval relies on cataloging, indexing, and defined recovery procedures. Common archive formats include container and archive formats such as ZIP, TAR, or specialized formats in long-term digital preservation.

In computing, archiving is used for emails, documents, and logs, turning active data into read-only records and freeing primary storage. Web archiving captures snapshots of web pages over time, creating a historical record; projects include the Internet Archive and national libraries. Challenges include data degradation, hardware obsolescence, and format drift; preservation strategies include metadata-rich storage, redundant copies, emulation, and migration to newer formats.

Legal and standards contexts address records management requirements, privacy concerns, and provenance. Archiving is central to compliance, transparency, and historical research, balancing accessibility with long-term preservation and resource constraints.