When Good Data Goes Bad

Diving Into the Recycle Bin

If you work with Windows regularly, you've probably learned that it's very easy to erase even large groups of files accidentally. Take a dollop of time pressure, add a pinch of inattention, and whoops!--you just erased next year's budget. Recovering files deleted this way isn't tough: Open the Recycle Bin, and drag out the files you want to restore.

But the Bin does impose limitations. At its default setting, it will hold the equivalent of 10 percent of the drive size (a 1GB drive, for example, sets aside a 100MB Recycle Bin)--plenty for the majority of users. But if you delete a larger chunk of files, the Recycle Bin may empty itself of the overflow, leaving you no chance to retrieve it. And you can delete files from within Windows 3.1 or DOS applications, beyond the protective custody of the Recycle Bin.

Unrecycle Files

One preventive solution is to bump up the capacity of the Recycle Bin: Right-click on its icon, choose Properties, and move the slider to the right. But increase the Bin's size only when necessary. Other files will not be able to occupy that space.

We found a better solution in a couple of third-party packages. McAfee Utilities ($19) and Norton Utilities ($50) extend the Recycle Bin's capabilities and can recover otherwise irretrievable data. Both also let you restore deleted files that Windows can't resurrect, such as those expunged from within DOS or killed by old 16-bit applications from the Win 3.x days.

When Windows "erases" a file, it does not overwrite the data immediately but instead leaves it on the disk and hides it. The operating system specifically designates that space as available for other files, and the next time something gets saved, the system overwrites those marked files. Both McAfee's UnErase application and Norton's UnErase Wizard will scan the hard disk for such earmarked documents, produce a list of recently deleted files, and give you the option of recovering a few or all of the files.

In our tests, both Norton's and McAfee's tools managed to recover all the files that we'd deleted, without a problem. But you have to act fast to unerase effectively. Once Windows marks files as usable space, the system can overwrite them at any time.

The McAfee and Norton packages also let you specify file types that you'd never want to recover from the Recycle Bin (.tmp temporary files, for example, or Internet browser cache files). The programs will blow these specified types of files away as soon as they enter the Bin, increasing the chances you'll be able to retrieve something you really need.

Warning! If you suddenly lose data but don't have a recovery utility installed, do not install an unerase utility on the system from which the data disappeared. If you do, the odds are high (and Murphy's Law dictates) that you'll overwrite the very data you're trying to recover. After all, Windows has marked the file as open to all comers--including the utility itself. To bypass this problem, McAfee and Norton include a special recovery floppy with their suites. You simply boot directly from the floppy and then use the included DOS unerase tools. If you've just deleted the file, you will have the best chance of recovering at least some (if not all) of your lost documents.