Various embodiments for retaining diagnostic information for data in a computing storage environment. In one such embodiment, a diagnostic component, apart from a volume table of contents (VTOC), associated with an integrated catalog facility (ICF) catalog and with a base data set from data sets via a catalog association record, is initialized. The diagnostic component is configured to retain base data set-specific diagnostic information retrievable by the computing storage environment to assist in error diagnosis and the ICF catalog is one of the data sets storing information about the data sets for facilitating a retrieval of a name of the base data set and assists with retaining and retrieval of the base data set-specific diagnostic information. The base data set-specific diagnostic information is stored pursuant to at least one event associated with the base data set.