archiving

Pluralarchivings

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The practice of moving inactive or historical data into secure storage for long-term retention.

   Like a library moving rarely read books into deep storage instead of throwing them away.

   Proper archiving ensures that decades-old transaction records remain retrievable.

   Archiving moved the dormant project files off the main servers and into cold storage.

   Similarstorage, preservation

   Note

   As a name for the practice it is usually uncountable: proper archiving, an archiving policy, with no article needed. The countable use, with the plural archivings, counts separate operations, such as two archivings of the same database a year apart. Unlike the verb form, it takes no direct object. What gets archived follows of instead (the archiving of old records).

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of archive.

   The library is archiving thousands of newspapers before they decay.

   Engineers are archiving the sensor data as it streams in.

   Note

   The verb behind this form is transitive, so it normally carries a direct object: archiving the sensor data, archiving old letters. With a form of be it builds the progressive (the library is archiving its newspapers). In a noun slot it works as a gerund (archiving them took a week). In spelling, the final e of archive drops before -ing.

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