The retention area is space used to store older versions of files and files that you have deleted from your computer. Whenever a file is changed on your computer, Rhinoback copies the new version to the secure offsite data backup facility and moves the previously backed up version to the retention area. When you delete a file from your computer Rhinoback moves the backed copy to the retention area. Old files remain in the retention area according to the policy set in your backup set. By default old files remain in the retention area for 7 days. Files in the retention area can be restored by selecting an older version of a file when selecting files to be restored. 

Rhinoback Online Backup allows you complete control over how long your files will be retained.  Advanced retention policies allow you retain a specified number of backup versions of each file.  You also have options to retain weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly backup versions under different policies.  Current versions of your backup files are retained for as long as you keep your account.  Furthermore, Rhinoback implements your retention policies in a very smart way, there is no need to keep multiple copies of the exact same file version for different retention policies.  For example; if you have specified that you want backup versions of your files from the end of each month to be retained for 12 months and you have also specified that you want toe end of year backup to be retained for 7 years, Rhinoback is smart enough to retain the version already saved at the offsite data vault without the need to make additional copies for each period if the file has not changed.  This also saves storage space and reduces your cost, extra storage is not needed for your monthly, quarterly, and yearly retained backups for files that are the same.