The new federal rule 26(a)(1)(B), effective Dec.1, 2006, requires parties to provide, without discovery request, “a copy of, or a description by category and location of, all documents, electronically stored information, and tangible things that are in the possession custody, and control of the party and that the disclosing party may use to support its claims or defenses, unless solely for impeachment.”

That sounds straightforward enough; the issue may be that ESI (Electronically Shared Information) can come from many different sources and can even appear to have been lost! This can occur for several reasons:

1. Computers come from the manufacturer with a Hardware Protected Area (HPA), which is generally used to store vendor, diagnostic and recovery utilities. This area will not show up in a normal search.

2. Hard drives can come with a Device Configuration Overlay (DCO) which is similar to an HPA. Hard drives commonly flag areas which have bad clusters, or spots on the drive which are corrupted. An area with important data can inadvertently be manually flagged as being “bad” and the operating system will ignore that area. These files will not show up during a normal search.

Solutions:

Easiest:

1. Click on your Start button on your pc.
2. Then on Search.
3. Click on searching “all files and folders”.
4. Next, click on “Advanced Options”
5. Finally, ensure “Check Hidden Files” is optioned.

More Complicated:

1. Go To:
http://www.octanesoft.com/data_recovery_free_edition.html
2. Follow instructions.

3. It’s FREE!!

Worst Case Scenario

1. Call us for the contact info of a really good geek.

BNI Investigators: Street smart: Web savvy.

Be safe,

Lina

Filed under: electronic data, files, hidden file, hidden information, hiodden information, recovery