Description:  Refers to any mass storage system that does not have an organizational or relational data structure to manage the information and electronic items. Enterprise storage systems now frequently use pooling or clustering systems to create large virtual storage locations from many physical storage devices. These systems may be visible to users as network shared directories with mapped drive letters. The systems control access rights, disaster recovery and may have other features that will aid or hinder search and retrieval.

Metric:  The metrics will include the time, effort and expense to identify the repositories and determine the method to determine what is relevant in the unstructured pool of ESI. Since the system itself will probably not have search and restoration mechanisms built into it, the primary initial goal will be the determination of how to retrieve relevant ESI.