I’m a computer dummy. I didn’t know emails would work unless they were on a server.
Typically, in a Microsoft Exchange environment, all of the emails are stored on the server. Backups of the server capture all emails that are stored on the server at that time. However, it is possible to create a PST file on your local hard drive that you can use to perform local archiving of emails to get them off of the server. In his testimony last night, the commissioner said that this is why the emails were on Lerner’s hard drive rather than on the server. He also said that they only had 6 months of backups, which is why they cannot reconstruct her emails from 2 years ago in full.
I do understand that exclamation, although I find it to be extremely unlikely that her computer hard drive happened to crash just after investigation began, and it may be criminal that the servers were not backed up for longer than 6 months, if that is true.