Files, Backups & Junk

My backup tape ran out of room today. I wasn't terribly surprised. I've been trying to get management to notice the fact that files are growing at an astronomical rate & yet they still won't let me clean out any of the files from 10 years ago.

How do I get a handle on this problem? I've thought of a number of ideas & discarded most. I can't put limits on the amount of files the users keep or the size. Just reminding them they are over the limit on their email account is hassle enough. The Suits don't care about the size. They want everything to CYA & 'just in case'. I don't blame them - so do I.

I plan to pull all the files older than a certain date - trouble is, I've been asking for several years & still don't know what that date is. Three years sounds good to me. I'll create an 'Old' directory, that is read-only with the same file structure & put all the files I move off there. Then they can get to them quickly, if needed. Back them up a couple of times & they should always be available.

Clearing garbage won't help much or for long, though. Most of the files from more than a few years ago add up to about a third of the space taken up. Our old Word Perfect 6 files, although there are thousands of them, add up to only 3gb of space out of 150gb we're now using.

We have this catch-all directory where everyone has their personal files, files they share with others & all the group directories & files. Seven years ago, it was under 10gb. Since then we haven't done any serious cleaning, changing of the file structure or put any policies into effect to halt rampant growth. It isn't unusual for a single PowerPoint to take up 300mb. Everyone is scanning documents in now - we have workgroup scanners - & they're putting them in the same place as their regular Word documents.

Another option is a bigger backup. I'll have that ability in a few months, but again it is a short-term solution. Backing up that much data runs into the time crunch. There are NAS solutions, but getting the money for a larger backup was dicey.

I know this isn't an original problem & I've been looking at a lot of answers. Most of them are painful or expensive. All require that the Suits understand the issue - the hardest part - getting the executive buy-in.