Data archiving is the process of identifying the inactive data and moving them into a separate storage system. 

A system with large amount of inactive data makes the system more inefficient due to excess time consumed on processing of large amount of data

Data archiving helps to improve performance of any system and pave the way for retrieval of old inactive data when needed. Therefore the Data archiving is one of the best practices in storage management

Advantages of data archiving

It enables the retrieval of old inactive data when needed

Improve performance of the system

Make easier the backup and the recovery process 

Maintenance of the system also positively affected by archiving

Some people get the archive conflicted with the backups 

The differences between backups and archives

Backups

Backups are recoverable (Backups can be used for recovering data in disasters situations)

Backups are taken at regular times either by systemic process or manually

The values of the backups are short term because data get updated as you pass on to the next backup

Archives

Archives are accessible

Archiving is not frequently done

The values of the archives are long term