Safety copies are copies of the archived items. In a mailbox, they are identified by the pending archive icon. When you set up a vault store, you must specify when Enterprise Vault deletes safety copies.

The type of environment in which you are running Enterprise Vault influences how you configure the process for safety copies.

If you are setting up a pilot system in a test environment, where there is no need to keep users' data, set up the vault store so that Enterprise Vault deletes the safety copies immediately after archiving.

If you are setting up a pilot system in a production environment, it may be necessary for users to get their data back again after testing Enterprise Vault. In this situation, set up the vault store so that Enterprise Vault never deletes the safety copies. All the safety copies will remain in the original locations.

In mailbox archiving, if you have set up Enterprise Vault so that it creates shortcuts for archived items and safety copies are not deleted, the icons in the mailbox for the archived items remain as pending archive and do not revert to the shortcut icon.

When you have completed your testing, you can set Enterprise Vault to delete the safety copies at the selected time.