In effect, dark data and big data are really about the same thing—data management. Dark data describes knowing where all the meaningful data is and how to aggregate it, while big data infers understanding the complete picture of what data is coming in, especially if the volume of that data is getting larger:
Big data and dark data are almost the same things. Enterprises have been handling “big” sets of data for decades, but recently “big data” has become a buzzword. Consideration of big data should include whether volumes really rise to a big level and whether firm have a grasp on the data they get.
Dark data is a subset of big data. In this way, there are two sections of big data gathered: analyzed and unanalyzed. The unanalyzed data is dark data. Strikingly, unanalyzed data constitutes the greatest segment of big data.