Monday, October 30, 2006

Portable Apps Week - Smart Undelete

I've been really keen on the idea of portable applications lately and last weekend I picked up a few more for my USB drive. So, I'm declaring a portable app week here at Mack the # implement. Let's get started with the only application that actually cost me any money.

I was tidying up some folders on my desktop at home, got a little 'Shift+Delete' happy, and accidentally deleted all the digital pictures from my son's first trip to the Georgia Aquarium. This is a bad place to be. My mind began calculating the odds that my wife would just forget that the pictures ever existed. Of course, NASA would have a hard time coming up with that number. Then it hit me, they aren't really gone. They're just marked as deleted.

After a quick search (on another machine), I found several recovery tools. I finally opted for Smart Soft's Smart Undelete. It was cheap, had a small footprint(<1mb) and could be used from a USB drive. It also has a 100% money back guarantee.

The UI is simple and easy to use. Just tell it where to scan. It also gives you the option to only scan for certain file types. In my case, .jpg files. I was able to get everything back. I even justified to expense to my wife by explaining how I could use it the next time one of our many relatives deletes something important. Yeah... that's the ticket. ;)

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