One of the companies I worked for had an undersized file server and way too much data to store (it was before cheap cloud storage). The managers insisted the ol

One of the companies I worked for had an undersized file server and way too much data to store (it was before cheap cloud storage). The managers insisted the old data still was business critical so IT needed to 'archive' it, which consisted of copying the data in triplicate on a bunch of tapes... and that was it. It didn't occur to them that to make it useful we needed to know what was actually on the media. After the only people that knew anything about the data contents and purpose left, the archive became an ever expanding data/tape junkyard that occupied one of the rooms in the basement.