September 10, 2008

Undelete 2009 (Diskeeper Corporation, www.diskeeper.com, home edition $49.99, professional edition $59.95) is designed to safeguard all your files, including photo files, from a most devious threat--accidental deletion by you or mischievous or malicious deletion by children or employees. Although Windows usually sends deleted files to its Recycle Bin, there are circumstances when Windows removes deleted files from the Recycle bin. Enter Undelete 2009, which replaces the Windows Recycle Bin with a Recovery Bin and adds several other valuable features. The program works by creating a copy of every file you delete, including those on network drives, and placing the file in this Recovery Bin.

One of the most valuable features is the Version Recovery. Undelete 2009 will make a copy of any Microsoft Office document’s previous version before it is overwritten by a new version. What that means is that if you somehow overwrote a document and thought you had lost the original, you can now right click the file name and select "Previous Versions" from the menu and recover the previous version(s). This feature alone is worth the cost of the program. We can remember too many occasions where we could have saved hours of work, anxiety and frustration if we had Undelete 2009 installed. For businesses, this saving in time means saving money and safeguarding documents and data.

Version Recovery works with Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and HTML documents and will even work with Microsoft Office documents that are located on a server or documents deleted from a Command line. You can configure the program for the number of previous versions of a file to save and the maximum file sizes to save. You can also set up a single recovery bin for all disk volumes or separate bins for each disk volume.

Since the Undelete 2009 recovery bin mimics the structure of your disk, it’s easy to find recoverable files directly or by using the included search function. Recovering deleted files or previous versions is fast and certainly much faster than going to your backup set (if you have one, and if not, why not?). If you definitely want to permanently delete a file so nobody can recover it, the program includes a SecureDelete option, where the file is overwritten with random data, never to be seen again. The technique used is patterned after that used by the National Security Agency and the Department of Defense. A standalone module included with Undelete 2009 is Enhanced Emergency Undelete. This module can be run from the CD-ROM before installing Undelete 2009 and can recover files directly from the disk, provided they haven’t been overwritten.

The program uses a registered technique called InvisiTasking to perform Undelete 2009's operations. This is done with no memory overhead and no impact on your computer’s performance. Home, small or large businesses can vastly benefit from the features provided in Undelete 2009, especially the Version Recovery. So you can breathe easy, knowing that you have that evil delete key under control.

Don’t Panic 3 - Photo Edition (Image Recall, www.imagerecall.com, Windows 2000/XP/Vista, free trial download for 10 recovered images, full edition $29.95) is an invaluable utility program that provides tools for recovering digital images from erased, formatted or corrupted digital camera memory cards. The program works with all popular types of digital camera memory cards, and you can have the program place the recovered files on your hard drive or burn them onto CDs or DVDs for safekeeping.

The program works with almost all popular digital picture file formats, including the RAW format, although you can select specific formats (including audio files) for recovery. The program can work from a memory card reader, USB connected camera with internal memory and even a USB connected external hard drive. Don’t Panic 3 includes a thumbnail viewer to help identify pictures you want to recover and a secure erase feature for those image files you never want to see again, ever. Don’t Panic 3 can also scan your memory card for errors, helping you to decide whether you can safely use the card again after picture recovery and reformat or the card should be tossed or returned to the manufacturer for "repair or replacement" under warranty.

Our own experience with the program was very positive. During an important family event, we got the message "Card Full," even though we knew we had at least 100 photos to go. We tried the usual tricks of recycling the camera, shutting it off, taking both card and battery out, replacing battery and card and turning the camera back on, and the "Card Full" message was still there. We were sick at the thought of losing all those irreplaceable pictures we had taken so far. Later, after trying not to panic, we used Don’t Panic 3 on the balky memory card and the program showed us a list and thumbnails of all recoverable files to select from--and we recovered all our pictures. This is another program you hope you never have to use but are grateful it’s there if needed.

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