A system and method for providing cost-effective user-driven data archiving. An end-user utilizes a file selection for data archiving application to select certain specific files and/or file folders to be archived. The file selection for data archiving application invokes a translation software engine to translate the intended actions into instructions specific for a particular data archiving product in order for that application to archive the selected file(s)/folder(s) as intended by the user. In this manner, the user interface can be optimized for those purposes while the archiving application can by optimized for its purposes without regard to ease of use of the user interface.