Data retention and old backups

[enjay]

@Boredguy I think that's what we might end up doing too, although I'd be a bit twitchy about a retention period as short as 12 months. Of course, in the bygone days of tape backups, 12 months was probably the maximum most of us had, but "unlimited" storage spoils us!

[flipthebit]

Retention is a huge headache.  We're considering rethinking how we handle it and move data routinely into an archive drive which deliberately stores data to specified lengths depending on the type of data. When there's any onboarding/offboarding or change of academic year/financial year, things get moved to the appropriate location. Only then could we delete things reliably when required. A record of what and when can be kept of what was destroyed. It'll be a live store that is always accessible by those who should have access. It'll be backed up, but the backups don't need to be kept forever as the store will exist.

 

[browolf]

being a big school, email retention and sars is a big problem. I did one that produced 4000 emails to begin with. 

We have no retention policy and even have deleted retention set to 2 yrs for a reason no one can remember. I found a  trust email policy in google that deleted all email older than 6 months on the basis anything important should be filed elsewhere.   I'd really like a policy like that 😂

Edited May 13 by browolf

[TechMonkey]

42 minutes ago, browolf said:

being a big school, email retention and sars is a big problem. I did one that produced 4000 emails to begin with. 

We have no retention policy and even have deleted retention set to 2 yrs for a reason no one can remember. I found a  trust email policy in google that deleted all email older than 6 months on the basis anything important should be filed elsewhere.   I'd really like a policy like that 😂

I keep having to bang on here that email is not a storage or filing medium. If an email needs to be referred to it should be exported or the information entered where it is needed.  Problem here is that supposedly everyone is "too busy" to do any kind of admin and the SLT in charge of looking into it can only think that hiring a person to organise and file emails is the solution.

[FN-GM]

On 04/03/2026 at 20:38, Fazza said:

you never know they might start working in a School and could one day be your boss

 

I ended up managing the IT technician of the school I attended as a kid....