Provided are techniques for intelligent preemptive processing to avoid data from becoming Redundant, Obsolete or Trivial (ROT). An application configuration is monitored to generate application configuration data. Application settings are reconfigured based on the application configuration data and based on a risk data list, where the risk data list identifies one or more data files. A data file of the data files in an existing data format is preemptively converted to a new data format based on the reconfigured application settings. An attempt is made to verify the conversion by using the reconfigured application settings. In response to determining that the conversion succeeded and that a request is received from a new application to open the data file, the data file having the new data format is opened. In response to determining that the conversion failed, an error message is sent to request update of server data.