8Bit File

Undelete 360

It’s a rare Windows user who has never deleted the wrong file. But the data you delete isn’t really gone until you overwrite it, and even then it’s sometimes possible to recover the data without expert help. Undelete 360 is a free tool that can recover deleted data from your hard drives, USB drives, floppies, and digital cameras. It can recover files that have been deleted from the Recycle Bin as well as those too large for the Recycle Bin that have been deleted directly by Windows. Of course, there are no guarantees your data can be recovered, or that it will be completely intact. But Undelete 360 proved capable of recovering accidently or recently deleted data. It includes a Wipe Files tool that can securely delete files beyond recovery.

Undelete 360’s blue tones and ribbon-style toolbar make it a nice match for Office and other up-to-date suites. Two tabs access the program’s tools: Recover Files and Wipe Files. To test Undelete 360, we copied a folder containing mixed data to a new directory, renamed it, deleted it, and emptied the recycle bin. Next we selected our C drive in Undelete 360 pressed Start. It took a minute or so to search our C and D drive, displaying the results in the Files Found window with a directory view in the Grouped By panel. We could view files under a variety of headings: Deleted Files, File Preview, File Properties, Hex View, and Software Log as well as by Filename, Path, and Status. The Status of each file was either Very Good or Overwritten. We selected some files and pressed Recover. A pop-up appeared and asked us, politely, to configure our recovery options, such as keeping folder structure and recovering alternate data streams. We chose an output directory and pressed Start. Undelete 360 recovered the data, but we were unable to open the JPEG images with Windows Photo Viewer, Paint, or Photoshop. File recovery tools are available to help with such issues, but that’s another matter.

There are no promises when it comes to recovering data, as Undelete 360’s documentation points out. But many times, it’s your best option.