Gary, When I say "application" I am talking about the appication running on the computer (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_software). It the "application" does not provide record level retention policy then your options are very limited. This is why many financial institutions still create microfiche of computer generated reports. Companies who have moved away from microfiche have implemented report management systems such as Control-D or RMDS to archive reports as snapshots of records. These snapshots usually marry up to points in time when policy notices or statements were generated. When you consider that these systems are often backed up incrementally there is often a need to tie the backup retention schedule to the record retention schedule so that there is not a need to backup the supperset of data unnecessarily. Gerard List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance