Challenge

Our client represented a Taiwan-based company involved in U.S. litigation with an immediate need to implement their data preservation strategy. Having identified over 80 key custodians located in Taipei, a team of collection specialists was needed in Taiwan within the week to perform a full-image collection of the custodian hard drives. Daegis’ international travel-ready collection team was on the ground and working out the details of a customized data collection protocol within days. On arrival, the team learned that 90 hard drives with an average capacity of 85 GB needed to be imaged in less than seven days. The project scope and schedule presented unusual logistical and technical challenges given that Daegis’ standard operating procedure for data collection requires that duplicate copies be made of all collected data. Although this important policy safeguards against drive corruption, implementing the policy in this case added significantly to the project’s complexity due to the tight timeline.

Solution

Daegis’ team of collection specialists responded by: i) increasing capacity for simultaneous acquisitions; (ii) developing a strategy that created time for backup creation; and (iii) maintaining flexibility to ensure sufficient time was allocated to troubleshoot difficult acquisitions without compromising overall project progress.

1. Daegis collection specialists worked together seamlessly to perform up to eight simultaneous acquisitions. An organizational schema was crafted that allowed for the smooth receipt and return of computers with appropriate chain-of-custody documentation. Lag time between acquisitions was controlled through careful resource management. As a result of this careful planning, business disruption was kept to a minimum and the project deadline was met.
2. To incorporate our backup policy into this tight schedule, our collections team developed a strategy that relied upon an automated nightly backup. This was vital to the success of the project because it allowed the team to complete a verified backup of all collected data by the final day in Taipei. This also greatly minimized any chance of re-inconveniencing the client with a follow-up collection.
3. The Daegis collection specialists developed fluid plans to handle the technical challenges they encountered without slowing the entire process.

Successful on-time completion of this project highlights not only Daegis’ high level of expertise in performing data collections but also our hallmark flexibility, which allowed us to complete a seemingly undoable project.