This article describes the differences between the legacy Unlimited Trash feature and the current Data Retention capabilities
Unlimited Trash
Unlimited Trash is a legacy option for the Egnyte Connect platform. When enabled, items in Trash can never be purged from the system. While this made sure that no files were ever accidentally or maliciously removed from the system permanently, Trash does count toward a domain's overall storage, so the Unlimited Trash setting did prevent the domain's storage from ever being reduced.
Default Retention and Retention Policies
The Default Retention and Retention Policy capabilities within Secure & Govern give the administrator flexibility with regards to what data is retained. The admin can define retention policies that will prevent files from being purged based on properties such as last accessed date or the type of file. Default retention prevents any files that are not governed by policies from being purged from the system, behaving in a similar manner to the old Unlimited trash
More information about Default Retention can be found here.
More information about Content Lifecycle policies can be found here.
Key Differences
The major difference between Unlimited Trash and Data Retention is the treatment of empty folders. With Unlimited Trash, no objects in trash could be removed, including empty folders. Data Retention focuses on the files themselves and not the folder, so retention will never be placed on an empty folder since there are no files to retain within it. With that in mind, customers switching from Unlimited Trash to Data Retention should be aware that empty folders that were previously kept in Trash will now be purged based on the Trash policy settings. Due to that, Trash policy settings should be configured prior to switching from Unlimited trash.