eDiscovery Terms and Questions

General questions about file types, terminology, and processes that are commonly associated with eDiscovery

What is metadata?
What is metadata? Metadata is ‘data about data,’ and all computer files have it. As you create and modify files on your computer, the applications you are ...
Fri, Jun 23, 2023 at 8:45 AM
What are PST files?
What is a PST file? A .pst (Personal Storage Table, or PST) file is a special file type created by Microsoft for their Outlook email app. When you use Outl...
Fri, Jan 19, 2018 at 2:43 AM
Why does email metadata sometimes appear inconsistent?
Email metadata doesn't always appear to be what it seems. Here are a few things to keep in mind for the emails you send and when looking at fields like ...
Fri, May 26, 2023 at 12:54 AM
What are zero-byte files, and how do I deal with them?
What are zero-byte files? The unit of digital data is a 'bit' (plural: bytes.) Most files are comprised of many kilobytes (thousands of bytes) or m...
Wed, Nov 13, 2024 at 1:52 AM
During the OCR process, what happens with text?
You've probably heard the term "OCR" being used when it comes to scanned documents or in relation to searchable PDF files. Here's a closer...
Wed, Oct 4, 2023 at 2:23 AM
What are MD5 hash values?
An MD5 hash value is a simple text string that serves as digital 'signatures' of files. For example "e43b3e2da3be90029bc45f9c7ad061e7" or ...
Tue, Jan 8, 2019 at 12:30 AM
What are Outlook Message Classes/msg files? And how does GoldFynch use them?
What are Outlook Message Classes? Outlook .msg files can represent a wide variety of Outlook items apart from email messages, such as Outlook address book ...
Fri, Nov 15, 2024 at 6:39 AM
Word Stemming and Stop Words
What is word stemming? Word stemming is the process that normalizes the tense and the plurality of words for searching, in order to cast a wider net and...
Mon, Dec 11, 2023 at 5:17 AM
What are Load Files?
When legal productions are shared, they often contain files originating from different software (e.g. .docx files from Microsoft Word, .msg and .eml files f...
Sat, Jan 9, 2021 at 2:38 AM
Extracting the Author metadata
What is the Author field?  The "Author" field is a common metadata field that is contained within various file formats, such as Office files a...
Fri, May 26, 2023 at 3:17 AM