If you commit an “oops” and delete a file you meant to keep, or if you want to
try to find an earlier version of a file that had been overwritten, you go to the
desktop and right-click the Recycle Bin. The ghost of Peter Norton (he sold
his company to Symantec in 1990, though his picture and name still appear
on many of its products) searches the drive and presents all of the files that
can be restored. Click them and you’re back to the future. For information,
consult http://www.symantec.com.
Undelete from Diskeeper works in a similar manner, replacing the Windows
Recycle Bin with its own Recovery Bin. This product offers the same sort of
protection as does Norton, but it goes a bit further in providing automatic file
version protection for Microsoft Office files. If you accidentally save over a
still-valuable Office file, this program can help you recover. If you’re wonder-
ing how you might save over a file, consider this scenario: You open a Word
document or an Excel spreadsheet to use as a template for a new file and
then choose Save instead of Save As.
Undelete also is capable of holding on to files that the Windows Recycle Bin
declares too large to hold. And version 5.0 of Undelete adds Emergency
Undelete, which can recover files deleted before Undelete was installed on
your system.. .provided they have not been overwritten by other data. For
information, consult http://www.diskeeper.com.
Nagging about defraggers .................................................................
The defragmenter utility included with Windows works... in a relatively slow
and clumsy way. If that’s all you’ve got, make sure to apply it to your hard
disks at least once a month — more often if your machine is heavily used and
especially if you work with large files (graphics, music, speech) that increase
the chances of fragmentation. You can get to the built-in utility by going
to My Computer and then right-clicking the icon for your hard drive. Click
Properties➪Tools. You’ll find a Defragmentation tool on that page. Chapter 2
talks more about this topic.
In my opinion, two better choices are available, and they are sold by the
same two companies that make the best undelete programs:
Diskeeper is, in my experience, the fastest and most efficient defrag
utility. It can be run on a scheduled basis or set up to run in the back-
ground, eliminating fragmentation while you use your computer.Norton’s Speed Disk is part of Norton Utilities and in addition to reassem-
bling fragmented files it can reorder their location on the disk so that the
more heavily used programs and data files are easier for the computer
to locate.Chapter 19: Essential Utilities for Laptop Users 293