Undelete - Saving Time and Money

A Backup Article Contributed by Ashley Lister

Undelete - Saving Time and Money

Those computer users who do not have an undelete facility at their disposal are not just running the risk of losing vital information. They are also running the risk of wasting a lot of time and money.

Undelete Explained.

Undelete is the utility that retrieves deleted files from a hard drive. Whether the files have been deliberately deleted, accidentally deleted, or "lost" due to a malicious virus attack, undelete is (usually) able to retrieve the files and restore them to their original locations. In most cases file retrieval is easily achieved.

Undelete Saves Time.

Those computer users who are not operating a system with an undelete utility are running the risk of wasting valuable time. If the recovery of a file is required the traditional methods are to access the recycle bin of the Windows operating system and begin searching through the contents. If the file isn't located in the recycle bin (and the recycle bin can be ignored by some files and prove too small for many others) restoration has to be made through retrieval from a backup.

While this is always an effective way of restoring information it is also a slow one. The restoration of a single file is a laborious procedure and this chore could be circumvented by the installation of simple undelete utility.

It is also worth observing that retrieving a previous backup means the information isn't going to be current. The information that is restored will be missing all the data that has been added to the file since the backup was performed. In some cases this might only be a negligible amount. In other cases it might be enough to make the whole operation futile.

Undelete Saves Money.

Considering the manpower involved to restore a single file from a backup, a reasonably priced undelete utility could easily pay for itself the first time it was used. If the undelete utility is used more frequently it can soon become a bargain of an asset.

A recent article in the NY Times mentioned that USA corporations lose $15 billion dollars a year due to accidental file deletion. It's a staggering figure that could be greatly reduced if more people were taking advantage of an undelete utility. Rather than having to waste valuable man hours resorting to previous backups, searching tape storage drives, and slowly reinstalling information that shouldn't have been deleted in the first place, an undelete utility could help restore the deleted file in a couple of swift keystrokes.

But, while undelete utilities can be a marvelous asset to a corporation - efficiently saving time and money - no undelete utility should be used instead of a backup. Data retrieval can be easier and more cost efficient using an undelete utility but there are occasions when undelete will simply not be able to find and restore the missing information. In these instances a backup will prove invaluable and it has been shown to be the surest method of keeping data safe and accessible.