months, possibly a year, to figure out how to do it. it would cost close to $1 million and there were no guarantees. >> after everybody gave up, we were driving around the beltway after we picked up our diskettes from this one government agency who failed. hutchins, my deputy said, you ought to give me a shot. you gave all the other big boys a shot. i said what are you going to do? he said, i'm going to scotch tape them back together. i said, that's not going to work. >> the inspiration was a post-it note. the adhesive on the back is strong enough to hold together, but it is easily removed, leaving no residue behind. first, technicians used heat to smooth out the rumpled pieces. unfortunately, not all of the pieces could be sufficiently repaired. so they needed to find a way to replace the damaged pieces to make a complete disk. >> so what we did is then take that original piece of evidence, put it onto that disk and actually cut out a template of where it would fit into.