Is Undelete Software for Real?
Your mom always told you that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. In the case of undelete software, you may be thinking that it sounds too good to be true. After all, how can software go in and undelete files lost to viruses, power surges, computer errors, hard drive failures, and formatting?
Undelete software can recover files lost due to numerous errors and deletions including those listed above and many more. It can do this because deleting files and formatting disks don't work the way most computer users have been led to believe. Most people think that once a file is permanently deleted such as when the Recycle Bin is emptied, it is gone forever. Likewise, most people think that formatting a hard drive completely erases everything on the drive permanently.
What really happens is a different story. Data is erased in either case, at least not immediately. When a file is deleted, only the pointer that tells Windows and programs where the file is located is removed. When a storage device is formatted, the indexes, root, directory, and other structural components are replaced with empty ones. None of these empty features have any file information in them so the device appears completely empty. The files remain where they were until new programs and data replace them.
The fact that data remains on the disk makes it possible for undelete software to go in and recover it. Instead of looking to the master indexes and tables for file information, the undelete software looks deeper and finds the data.
Think of it as a cookbook. If you tore out the table of contents, you couldn't find recipes based on the table of contents but you could still flip through the pages and find recipes. Undelete software bypasses the table of contents and scans the drive for deleted data.
Undelete software is effective at recovering all types of deleted files from just about any storage device including hard drives, CDs, DVDs, cameras, SmartCards, removable storage, and MP3 players.
While data recovery can be done, it's not always successful. One of the main obstacles that undelete software has yet to overcome is when data is permanently overwritten. Once deleted, data is considered fair game for deletion. When you install other programs or create new documents and save them to the drive in question, you risk overwriting your previously deleted data.
Because of this, use extreme care when you experience any sort of data loss that you want to use undelete software to get back. Once overwritten, your data is gone for good.
If you're not sure that undelete software can help you, you can take a free test drive of many of the leading undelete software utilities on the market to see if your data is a candidate for recovery. Each brand uses their own algorithms to recover data which means if one undelete software utility doesn't work, you might still have a chance with another brand.
