Data preservation ensures that data remain intact, accessible and understandable over time. This requires preserving the integrity of digital files themselves, and can be considerably more complicated.
Preservation methods include:
preserving the software required to interact with the data or emulating older systems
migrating data to new formation and new media
ensuring there is sufficient metadata to understand, interpret, and manage and preserve the data
The transfer of material to a facility that appraises, preserves, and provides access to that material on a long-term or permanent basis.
Storing and archiving research data are different activities. Storage is a necessary step towards archiving data, but archiving data encompasses both active preservation of the digital object and increased discoverability and access to those data. Archiving your data will:
safeguard against media degradation (e.g. CD file corruption)
prevent data from being unusable For instance, the obsolesce of data formats (e.g. VisiCalc spreadsheets). It can be useful to archive the installation media and software that created the data.
provide easy access and retrieval in the future (e.g. search interface)
Data storage concerns the amount of data that should be stored enough so that project results can be reconstructed.
Keep at least 3 copies of your data. For example, original, external/local, and external/remote, and have a policy for maintaining regular backups.
