From ROT to CLEAN: What’s Really Sitting in Your Storage?

The ROT term has become outdated (ironic, no?).  It's time for a better, more empowering, term.

 A few years ago, I used to audit data centres.  

Fifteen years back, I’d walk around datacenters checking their physical processes that took into security, access controls and standard operating procedures. I saw datacenters from London to Chicago! What was always impressive was the rows of technology, all pristine... however, the answers were often vague. 

But here’s what I keep thinking about now: 
Those same datacenters still exist. Still powered, still cooled, and still holding the same files I logged...now buried under another decade of digital debris.  

A view of downtown Chicago in 2011 (taken with my iPhone 4!)

Let's be honest about ROT 

We’ve all heard the acronym. Redundant. Outdated. Trivial. ROT. Frankly, it's all getting a bit boring! It’s been the default term for forgotten files and bloated shared drives for more than a decade. And honestly? It’s as tired as the data it describes.

Everyone agrees ROT is a problem. But not many are doing anything meaningful about it.

It just keeps growing, on and on and on... consuming money, energy and emitting lots of CO2...  

And so do the risks:

• Rising cloud costs from storing things you no longer use.
• GDPR and retention violations from data you forgot you had.
• Security gaps from files that fall outside of policy or monitoring.
• Increased CO₂ emissions from storing data with no value.

ROT is easy to ignore, until it isn’t. 

What if we flipped it?

What if, instead of just complaining about ROT, we transformed it into something positive?

Something measurable, valuable and sustainable.

What if ROT became CLEAN?

From ROT to CLEAN 

CLEAN isn't just a nice acronym.  It's a better philosophy.

• Classified – You know what it is and where it came from.
• Legal – It’s retained, used, or deleted according to policy.
• Essential – It serves a current business or operational purpose.
• Auditable – It can be traced, justified, and governed.
• Necessary – It belongs in your environment, not just because it was dumped there.

CLEAN data is intentional data. 

It’s what every enterprise says it wants... trusted, clean, usable information. 
 But it starts by addressing what’s already sitting quietly in storage. 

A practical way forward 

At One Discovery, we don’t promise magic, we offer visibility.

Our approach is grounded in a simple cycle:

Discover → Cleanse → Archive or Leverage → Understand → Protect

You start by asking:

1.  What do we actually have?
2.  Who owns it?
3.  Is it needed?
4.  Is it safe? 

And then you act on the answers.

Some clients find that 20–30% of their unstructured data has no business being there. That’s storage reclaimed with Risk reduced, budget being freed and ESG impact lowered.

And once the foundations are clean, you can build with confidence into AI, automation, analytics, and beyond.

Closing Thoughts

ROT may be a tired acronym. But the problem is still very real, and maybe the fix isn’t just deletion. 

Maybe it’s just that mind set change of how do I make my data CLEAN? 

Ready to find out what’s really in your storage? 

We’ll help you make the invisible visible and turn ROT into something CLEAN. 

Nick Pollard is a Managing Director (EMEA) for One Discovery.  He is a seasoned leader with more than 20 years of experience working in real-time investigation, legal and compliance workflows across highly regulated environments like banking, energy and healthcare as well as national security organizations. You can contact at nick.pollard AT onediscovery.com