Archival Storage

Since its founding, ICPSR has kept copies of its data holdings in off-site locations. Before 2006, paper content and magnetic tapes were stored in a physical warehouse south of Ann Arbor. More recently, ICPSR has added further redundancy to its archival storage processes by identifying multiple and varied methods and locations to back up its holdings.

ICPSR currently maintains five copies of its data (and requires that any off-site backup be encrypted):

• One copy held onsite on network-attached storage (NAS)
• One copy put on tape once a month onsite, with each copy held for 12 months
• One copy held locally
• One copy stored in Amazon's storage cloud
• One copy with the DuraSpace cloud storage system DuraCloud