Last Updated: March 11, 2026
By 2026, enterprise data volumes will be doubling every two years, and nearly 70 percent of that data will qualify as historical data archive. It is valuable but rarely accessed. You cannot delete it due to audits, regulations, or business continuity. But keeping it all in production storage is a costly mistake. The problem is not whether you archive data. The problem is how you archive it. Not all types of archiving or data archiving types are created equal, especially in Salesforce.
In this blog, we break down the most effective data archiving methods, explain what data archiving is in a Salesforce context, and show how the right data archiving solutions protect performance, compliance, and costs without compromising access.
Data Archiving Types & Their Importance
Understanding the different types of archiving and data archiving types is the foundation of any sustainable data archiving strategy. Each archive method serves a distinct purpose depending on data volume, access frequency, and regulatory requirements.
Database Archiving
Database archiving focuses on moving inactive or rarely accessed records out of live Salesforce objects into lower-cost storage while preserving data integrity, clearly defining what is archiving data in a Salesforce environment.
This data archival approach is widely used in industries handling large transactional volumes, including finance, retail, and SaaS. Many organizations also combine database archiving with a data warehouse archive strategy to retain analytical value without affecting system performance.
Email Archiving
Email data is frequently overlooked until it becomes a compliance problem.
Email archiving is one of the essential data archiving types that captures inbound and outbound communications linked to Salesforce records and stores them securely for long-term access. Legal, healthcare, and financial organizations depend on this data archiving method to meet regulatory retention requirements and support audits or legal discovery.
If emails are part of your business record, archiving them is not optional.
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Cloud Archiving
Cloud archiving stores archived data outside Salesforce in secure and scalable cloud environments.
Big Objects Archiving
Big Objects archiving is Salesforce’s native approach to managing large volumes of historical data archives.
Big Objects are one of the most scalable data archiving types, designed to store billions of records with minimal performance impact. They rely on predefined indexes and structured queries, making them suitable for archiving closed cases, completed transactions, audit logs, and compliance records.
This data archiving method works best when businesses want to keep archived data inside Salesforce while protecting system performance.
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Compliance Archiving
Compliance archiving ensures archived data meets legal, regulatory, and industry-specific retention requirements.
Industries governed by HIPAA, GDPR, FINRA, or SOX rely on compliance-focused archive storage solutions to enforce immutability, audit trails, and access controls. Without compliance archiving, archived data quickly becomes a liability rather than protection.
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Common Data Archiving Methods & Solutions
This is where specialized data archiving tools become essential.
Introducing DataArchiva
DataArchiva is a Salesforce native data archiving solution built for enterprises that need scale, compliance, and control.
It supports multiple data archiving types, including database archiving, Big Objects archiving, and cloud-based archival to AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Heroku, or on-premises systems. Archived data remains accessible directly inside Salesforce without disrupting users or reports.
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Salesforce storage is expensive. Keeping inactive records in production objects is wasteful.
DataArchiva helps organizations reduce Salesforce storage costs by up to 85 percent while maintaining compliance, security, and instant access to archived data.
What you get with DataArchiva
- Automated Salesforce data archiving with flexible scheduling.
- Custom archiving and purging policies aligned with retention rules.
- In-app access to archived data directly in Salesforce.
- Relationship-aware bulk data archiving.
- Role-based security, encryption, and audit logs.
- AI-powered global search across archived data.
- Instant restore of archived records with original structure.
- Unified reporting across live and archived datasets.
- Freedom to store data on AWS, Azure, Heroku, GCP, or on-premises.
This is not just storage optimization. This is a complete data archiving strategy designed for scale.
Real World Use Cases of Data Archiving
Financial Services
Banks rely on different data archiving types to archive transactions, statements, and compliance records in order to meet audit requirements while maintaining fast operational systems. Database archiving ensures regulatory compliance without sacrificing performance.
Healthcare
Healthcare providers retain patient records for decades. Understanding what archiving data in healthcare ensures long-term data archiving that supports HIPAA compliance while keeping clinical systems responsive and secure.
Research and Academia
Universities and research institutions preserve datasets for validation, reuse, and grant obligations using structured data archival solutions.
Government
Government agencies rely on archived data to maintain citizen records, legal documentation, and institutional history through secure archive methods.
Conclusion
Choosing the right types of archiving is no longer a technical preference. Understanding what archiving data is and applying it correctly has become a business necessity.
Whether you rely on database archiving, cloud archiving, or Salesforce Big Objects, these data archiving types directly impact your data archiving strategy, system performance, compliance readiness, and long-term costs.
Archive nothing, and your system slows down. Archive poorly and you lose visibility. Archive correctly, and your data starts working for you instead of against you.
Your Salesforce storage costs will not fix themselves.
If your org is already struggling with performance, compliance pressure, or rising storage bills, waiting longer only makes it worse.
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FAQs
Data archiving in Salesforce is the process of moving inactive or historical records from live objects into secure storage while keeping them accessible for compliance, reporting, or recovery.
Salesforce data archiving methods include database archiving, Big Objects archiving, cloud archiving, email archiving, and compliance-focused archival solutions.
Big Objects are ideal for Salesforce native historical records. Cloud archiving is better for massive scale, lower costs, and extended retention periods.
A solution that enforces encryption, access control, audit trails, and retention policies. DataArchiva is built specifically to meet these compliance requirements.
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