Whether facing litigation or an investigation, the first electronic discovery requirement is to locate and preserve relevant data in its various locations. vdiscovery's skilled professionals work to preserve and ensure that ESI is protected against inappropriate alteration or destruction. vdiscovery has assisted many clients to efficiently meet their preservation obligations and avoid the spoliation of evidence. Properly collecting and restoring large quantities of electronically stored information requires defensible protocols and proper technology solutions. We have a deeper understanding of the proper tools used to restore obsolete data and the costs associated with such efforts.

The preservation and collection phases of electronic discovery often overlap. vdiscovery will work to ensure that all potentially relevant information is found and protected. With tight timelines enforced by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the collection of information needs to be fast, defensible and cost effective. Often when collecting data, the tendency is to collect far more than is required, increasing time and expenses. vdiscovery's forensic collection team can explain and advise a targeted collection strategy to avoid over-collection and the high cost associated with it. With vdiscovery costly collections are a thing of the past.

vdiscovery's attention to detail allows us to ensure that our work is protected from other data that has been collected or produced by limiting the number of employees who have access to our collection database. As technology advances the amount of data collected is increasing, as well as the amount of information needing to be reviewed during Document Review. As a result of significantly larger data, vdiscovery searches for documents in three primary areas:

Fixed Storage:
Fixed storage includes hard drives, as well as network servers, backup systems, computer workstations, desktop & laptop computers, and home computers..

Portable Storage:
Portable storage includes a wide range of electronic equipment, including traditional storage disks (Floppy, Zip, CD, DVD) or backup tapes, flash drives, USB drives, Palm Pilots, BlackBerrys, cell phones and iPods. .

Third Party Hosted Storage:
Third party hosted storage includes outside organizations such as accounting firms, law firms and electronic archiving firms. Internet-based services that host data such as sales information, customer service databases, online e-mail or instant-messaging services are also considered as third party storage.