An essential component of any data management plan is a well-defined strategy for storing both active and archived data. This is critical because digital files are vulnerable to loss, formats and storage media can become outdated, and data integrity can degrade over time. Here are a few questions to ask yourself when planning for storage throughout the data lifecycle:
- Are your data sensitive?
- How much data do you anticipate generating?
- Volume of research data can have an impact on budget, storage options, processing speed, ease of access and backup strategies. Look through the Data Storage at Purdue guide to see how these elements apply to Purdue supported storage.
- What type of active data storage environment do you need?
- "Active" or "working" data refers to your data as you collect and access it during the course of a project.
- RCAC has a Data Storage Solutions Finder tool offering recommendations of Purdue solutions appropriate to your usage needs and the data security constraints.
- How will this data be backed up?
- Who will be maintaining these processes?
- Define project roles to establish governance and assign appropriate access permissions. Create a storage hierarchy that enforces these permissions to maintain workflow integrity.
- Where will data be stored for preservation and access over the long-term?
- Once you are no longer working with "active" data, referring to your data collected and accessed during the course of a project, your data will be ready for "cold storage".
- Review our guidance on Preservation & Archiving data and information on choosing a Data Repository.
