Choosing the right kind of storage media

Depending on the length of archiving documents, the choice of storage media is also depends on the type of document to be stored. Administrative documents of an enterprise are to be archived for a number of years.

• 3 years: fired employee files
• 5 years tax documents relating to company law and social law (balance of any account, pay slips, payroll, individual account, register of attendance)
• 10 years accounting documents (books and documents) and documents relating to VAT (invoices, bills, registers)
• 30 years: titles and deeds of sale, leaflets distribution of participation and sharing.

The times indicated are the legal terms. Warning: The recommended duration of conservation is often longer than the statutory period. For example, it is advisable to keep records relating to wages 10 years, while the legal duration of storage is 5 years.

For documents to save more than 5 years, prefer an external solution rather than using CD-ROM or personal Hard drives. It is the duty of services to adapt their external storage, you pay for this service and you do not have to regularly buy new storage media according to the inevitable technological advances.

Constraints depending on frequency of use of the documents

Another question to ask about, is the use of archived documents: will this document be exploited regularly or rarely.

For documents to be used regularly, go for a in-house solution, on your server, your hard drives or CD-ROM

Costs of archiving

Given that the scalability of the media support constantly changing, you must consider which is the more expensive to the company, either internally or externally.