When it comes to being able to track historical emails, archiving has a distinct functionality.  Backup tapes won’t archive threaded email conversations.  Backup tapes only capture email that is available at that moment in time. A deleted email never gets captured by a back up tape.  On the other hand, archiving allows for retrieving even deleted emails.

The retrieval of information from back up tapes is usually very inconvenient.  Depending on how far back email messages require restoration, it could take an hour, to a day or longer to acquire the tapes.  If the tape is on site, the delay isn’t too long. Off site tape storage definitely create longer delays in the restoration process. After the time lag from request to email restoration, the email user then says “I can’t find the emails”. The tape pull process starts over again.  Many times it can be a guessing game, because people don’t remember what day, year or month they lost the emails.

Requesting a tape pull, receiving the tape, mounting the tape and then spinning it up are all variables of what can often be a very long time delay. Archiving eliminates the intermediary role a system administrator must play.  What if the email user could retrieve historical emails themselves?  Archiving software, such as GFI MailArchiver, empowers the email user community.  Imagine an email administrator has now set it up so staff can immediately retrieve missing or historical emails.  This allows the administrator to appear to be a super star.

Oh sure, people may still go through the guessing game.  The turn around time is minimal with an archiving system. People can guess about the date, location of missing email, but search time is less. People can also skip around quicker to find what they are looking for.

When it comes to file retention compliance issues, archiving systems are the best solution for preserving historical emails and documents.