NEW YORK, NY, Sept. 15, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — CTERA, a leader in intelligent data management, today released new research showing that the vast majority of data sitting on enterprise storage is rarely, if ever, used. An analysis of 16 petabytes of live production data across 856 file-share scans in enterprise NAS environments, including regulated industries, found that just 4.4% of stored capacity is actively used. The rest sits inactive, raising costs, widening security exposure, and undermining AI readiness.
The research also found:
- 83.1% of the total stored capacity is in files that have not been modified in more than one year.
- 97.5% of individual files had not been modified in more than one year.
- 88% of individual files had not been accessed in more than one year, indicating the extent of inactivity across enterprise file environments.
- Only 9.9% of stored data was accessed in any given 90-day period.
These findings point to a common yet costly pattern in which organizations use expensive primary storage as a de facto archive. IT professionals have a term for this accumulated inactive data: ROT, short for Redundant, Obsolete, or Trivial data that exists in duplicate or serves no clear business purpose. While cold data on primary storage is not a new challenge, the research highlights how this ROT data consumes storage as it is backed up, protected, and managed, increasing the resources needed to maintain the overall data estate.
The security implications are also significant. Inactive data often remains in the same network-accessible environments and under the same permissions as active data, potentially exposing far more information than employees and applications need for day-to-day operations.
The research also highlights an emerging AI-readiness challenge. As organizations use AI to search and retrieve enterprise information, large volumes of historical or inactive data can make it harder to surface the most relevant and current information. AI is only as useful as the data it can access, and only as reliable as the information it retrieves.
“When only 4.4% of capacity is actively used, enterprises are running their most expensive storage tier as what is effectively a cold archive. That creates a multiplier effect across storage and data protection costs, security exposure, and now the quality of information available to AI systems,” said Aron Brand, CTO of CTERA. “This points to a fundamental challenge in how organizations think about data management. The answer isn’t simply to delete old data, it’s to make better decisions about where that data belongs. Information can be retained and protected without living on expensive primary storage.”
The findings of this research can be found The Cold Data Report.
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About CTERA
CTERA is the global leader in the integrated data intelligence market, enabling organizations of all sizes to efficiently and effectively manage, protect, and leverage their unstructured data across highly distributed environments. With a foundation built on security, scale, and seamless integration, the CTERA Intelligent Data Platform empowers organizations to align their data management strategies to continuously deliver against today’s business needs and tomorrow’s vision.
Joanne Hogue Smart Connections PR for CTERA +1 (410) 658-8246 joanne@smartconnectionspr.com
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