I see this question often and have answered it back when people were moving off of QC10:

http://eyeontesting.com/questions/6900/best-way-to-archive-old-qc10-projects.html

Basically, you could re-arrange the Project-''tree'' structure in Site Admin so you have an additional ''archive'' domain, then move/migrate or upgrade projects into the new ''Archive'' domain, then upgrade them (if in the midst of an upgrade) and confirm that they work. then, you can DEACTIVATE them to save on server performance (less CPU cycles used for QC to monitor unused projects). They can be quickly re-activated as needed.

If the projects are really archival bound (most likely not needed unless there is an Audit or something), you could EXPORT the projects to QCP (self-contained project dump files).
These QCPs can be re-imported as needed, BUT BEWARE that they are VERSION-specific and if you later upgrade your server, they cannot be imported to a newer server (see my earlier post related to archival from QC10 link above).

more about QCP files in this post:

http://eyeontesting.com/questions/10689/how-do-i-export-a-qc-project-what-can-i-do-with-it.html

Archival via QCP files also frees up DB and repository space as the projects can be deleted from the server.

!!!! Make sure you have a GOOD BACKUP of ALL QC project DB's and Repository before doing this kind of ''cleanup''. It may also be a good idea to test the QCP file integrity for ability to import to a DIFFERENT/Test server of the same version as the source server the QCP was created from.

If the projects are not truly needed, you could also get the projects in a safe state and then take back up of the project DB schemas, and that projects repository and then archive those entities (offload them onto a storage drive or such and compress them to save space) that way they could easily be obtained for recovery if needed for audit purposes and this would also allow them to be later re-imported and upgraded into newer versions that the .qcp doesn't afford).

I offer this in addition to the above solution as dependent upon the size of the project, exportation into a .qcp file may not be an option due to the upper size limitation imposed upon rcp files (see documentation states 2-2.5 GB per file size maximum and others have allowed up to a maximum of 4 GB).

Hope this helps as well,
Dan

Yes, I often recommended the ''raw'' method of removing project from Site Admin, then backing up DB to file and placing into project repository folder and zipping up. then move the ZIP to an archive drive.
It may also be useful to maintain an Excel Spreadsheet to keep track of various archived projects, versions and filenames.

Name the Zip with project name **and** QC version.

Beware that if archive is needed in a future QC version, it will need to be restored and upgraded to current QC version (according to usual migration/upgrade process.

Also, since it is SQL-Server, the sp_change_users_login command must be run to ''fix'' the ''td'' user in SQL-Server.
Command in SQL-Server is:

**EXEC sp_change_users_login 'Update_One', 'td', 'td'**