Table rotation on a periodic (e.g. annual or financial year) basis is a common strategy, with carried-over opening balance records at the top coded to a dummy account. So the journal for the last ten years may actually be in tables journal_2013 through journal_2023. You can also then move these quiescent partitions to cheaper storage. After a few years, even to read-only archival medium. It’s not completely unknown for financial institutions to have to refer back to a paper form to audit or restate older accounts from inception.