First let em say I'm 100% in agreement with Bill that "backup tapes" are
NOT archived records and they SHOULD NOT BE retained any longer than they
would be needed to restore a system in the event of a catastrophic failure,
PERIOD.

I won't bother wading into the rest of this swamp of an issue, but will
respond to this point raised by Glen...


One reason a company could access records for business continuity that are
> three years old or older is that some companies may have As-Built drawings,
> land records, etc.  These can go back many years.
>
>
MANY organizations have as-built or construction and land records, and
these records would be necessary for a multitude of reasons for long
periods of time.

Copies of the records would remain on 'active systems' as long as they were
regularly accessed for business purposes, and these system,s would be
routinely backed up for continuity and recovery purposes, and then rotated
and overwritten once their usefulness was done (period to be set by
business rules).

Once that level of activity dropped to a point where the records were
infrequently referenced or used, they would typically be removed from
'active systems' and truly archived, on tape or other media, and be loaded
and used as needed.  And yes, these records on these media would ALSO be
backed up, but more than likely, less frequently because of the lack of use
and the media generally being stored in more stable situations.

The last comment I'll make regarding backups having records of varying
retention periods and the possibility of backups (however long they are
retained) containing copies of records whose retention has been met is the
Business portion of organizations should work with their IT groups to
establish processes that allow records of "like retention periods" to be
backed up together to avoid commingling of disparate records on backup
tapes.

...Electronic Records Policy... ??  I always thought organizations had ONE
RECORDS POLICY, irrespective of media, form or format the records were
stored ion and then established different PRACTICES for how to manage
records based on the format they are retained in.

 ::SMH::

Larry
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-- 
*Lawrence J. Medina
Danville, CA
RIM Professional since 1972*

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